W !••!

v-*.s SIi:"R!;2,S OF
/.'» CRT. RKADHRS

BEYOND THE
PASTURE BARS

BY DALLAS LORE SHARP

-•

SCHOOL

UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA

AT

LOS ANGELES
LIBRARY

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

BEYOND THE
PASTURE BARS

BY

DALLAS LORE SHARP

Author of "Wild Life Near Home,"
"A Watcher in the Woods."

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

BRUCE HORSFALL

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1914

Copyright, 1914, by
THE CENTUBY Co.

.5 5"3

TO

MY BIG BROTHER JOE

WHO USED TO "LET" ME GO WITH HIM

INTO THE WOODS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS 3

II THE CRAZY FLICKER 13

III THE WILD GEESE 25

IV THE WOOD-PUSSY .......... 37

V A HOUSE OF MANY DOORS . . 47

VI WILD LIFE IN THE FARM- YARD 57

VII A SONG OF THE WINTER WOODS 71

VIII ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL 83

IX THE DANCE IN THE ALDER SWALE ... . 99

X CHICKAREE THE SCOLD . . . . . . . .111

XI A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY ..... 125

XII CALICO AND THE KITTENS 137

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER AND PUPILS . . 149

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Beyond the pasture bars" .... Frontispiece

PAGE

Robin 3

Folk in scales 4

Folk in bare skins 4

Folk in fur 5

Folk in shells 6

Squirrel 9

Bumble-bee 10

What a glorious hole for a nest there must be in

there! , - . 16

He found himself inside an empty barn ... 19

Housekeeping for the geese is a particularly serious

business 29

There . . . was a family of seven young skunks . 39

They all followed her . . .41

Tall black cormorants, great foam-white gulls . . 51

The tame turkey-hen is notorious for stealing her

nest 62

The frozen winter fields 73

Upland and lowland, field and wood-lot ... 75

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The dim gray twilight of the winter .... 78

He climbed out on the slanting stake . . . 86

Pinky 89

Woodthrush 106

He would take one to a certain bottom limb . . 121

He eats caterpillars 130

She often found her two out among the trees . . 145

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

CHAPTEK I

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Y pasture bars are real cedar
rails that slide through old-
fashioned cedar posts at the
distant corner of my small pas-
ture. Whichever way I go
from the house I come to a pair
of pasture bars that need only
to be lowered, and I am in the
woods, or the wide hilly fields.
It is through these pasture bars
and into these woods and fields
that you are now to go with

I want to show you a hundred things ! But we
shall not have time for so many. Yet there are
more than a hundred wild birds and animals liv-

3

4 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

ing just beyond the bars, to say nothing of the

insects and flowers.
Inside the pasture
bars, here on the
few acres of my
small farm, living
on my land with me,
Folk in scales are almost a hun-

dred wild neighbors !

I counted them up the other day and found
seventy-five different species. There were thirty-
six different kinds of birds, the feathered folk;
fourteen kinds of folk in fur ; ten in scales ; ten in
bare skins ; and five in shells — and I can doubtless
find enough others of all these sorts to make a
round hundred when I know just who all my wild
neighbors are.

And besides these birds and beasts, here are the
white-faced hornets with their wonderful paper
house in the apple tree; the black and red ants
with their great mound on the hillside ; the wasps
with their adobe huts on the rafters in the barn;
the spiders with their
hunting nets ; the bees
at work for me in the
hives back near the Folk

* ,

V

Folk in fur

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS 7

woods; the moths and butterflies, the orchestra
of crickets and grasshoppers; the beetles and
bugs! What a world of wild folk lives with me
on both sides of the pasture bars!

But you cannot come to know them all in one
summer, nor in one book. The best thing that this
book can do, perhaps, is to let down the bars for
you ; or, better than that, to tell you to jump them,
and then to show you, if it can, how to see and to
hear and to know the wild things you will find in
the fields just beyond those bars.

Now your pasture bars may be some iron gate,
swinging into an old city cemetery, or into a fine
city park, where there are more policemen than
any other kind of wild animals, and where you
cannot pick the flowers, or climb the trees, or even
run across t'he grass.

Of course you cannot pick the flowers in a city
park ; there would not be enough to go round. But
you can sit quietly down upon a bench and watch
— the birds in the trees, the squirrels on the grass,
the bees and insects among the flowers. And in
some parks you can do what I cannot do here in
the country — you can see live bears, lions, wolves
and other great beasts from the wildest parts of
the world.

8 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Another thing you can do just as well in the
city park as in the country pasture — you can
learn how to sit still, look sharp, hear accurately,
and to ask of everything that comes along an in-
teresting question. In short, you can learn in a
city park the simple necessary lessons of wood
craft, and the names and habits, as well, of a num-
ber of the common animals, birds, trees, insects
and flowers.

Indeed, a city park in the spring time, when the
birds are migrating, is one of the best of places
to study and name them. One of my friends by
going morning after morning into Lincoln Park,
Chicago, saw and named 145 different species of
birds. And he says in his book, "Wild Birds in
City Parks," "During the migrations of the birds
city dwellers have one of the keenest delights of
country life brought to their very doors, because
many birds, migrating largely at night, are at-
tracted by the lights of the city and stop off in
their long journey to feed, so that a city park
often contains a greater variety of feathered vis-
itors than an equal area in the country."

So iron gate or cedar rails, it is possible for
every one of us to find some spot where the sky
is overhead, and the grass is under our feet, and

Squirrel

10 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

where, amotag the trees and bushes, robin and
squirrel and bumble-bee, along with a host of
other wild things, are living, and are ready
enough to be watched.

He is a true lover of the out of doors who loves
the patch of sky over his head, the wind in the
trees along his daily path, and the little lives that
share the sunshine and rain with him no matter
where the rain and sunshine fall.

Bumble-bee

THE CRAZY FLICKER

CHAPTER II

THE CRAZY FLICKER

T T was a bright spring morning, just the kind of
J- a morning to make a flicker go crazy, or a boy
or a girl go crazy, for that matter. The sun was
shining, the maples were blooming, the black birds
were gurgling, the bees were humming, the farm-
ers were plowing, and everything, everywhere
was singing or laughing or capering with the joy
of the fresh spring day.

As for me, I was going down the old zig-zag
lane in the fields doing all three things at once —
capering, laughing, singing; while the crooked
worm-fence, zig-zagging down each side of the lane,
seemed singing, laughing and capering with me
till it was in danger of shaking its riders off.

13

14 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Surely somebody besides the flicker was crazy,
or was going crazy!

Just then old Yarup, the flicker, swung over my
head and -galloped on across the fields toward a
large haybarn that had lately been built in a
near-by field. I was going over to the barn also,
but was still some distance away, when Yarup
landed on the ridge-pole, threw up his head yell-
ing "icick-wick-wick," then fell to on that ridge-
pole with his bill as if he intended to split the roof
into kindling wood.

"Woop!" he seemed to say, leaping straight up
into the air at the sound of the hollow boom from
within the empty barn. "Woop! hear the bang!"
and, clean out of his wits, he came down on the
ridge-pole yelling "Kei-yer! Kei-yer!" at all the
countryside for a mile around, then started again
to splitting kindling as if the world had to be set
on fire.

No, it was not to set the world on fire, but to
wake the world up, that he was pounding. As if
the whole spring world was not wide awake al-
ready! It was not kindling wood, but noise that
that crazy flicker was making — rattling, banging,
wanging noise! And he was making it just for
the fun of making it, yelling to hear himself yell,

THE CRAZY FLICKER 15

and hammering to hear himself hammer till the
big barn boomed and rumbled like a mighty bass
drum.

It is quite likely, however, that he was doing it
to show off, to attract the attention of Miss Yarup
or High-hole, or Flicker, or whatever name she
goes by in your dead trees and telegraph poles
(she has thirty-six different names, has this
flicker!). I am sure that it was partly for her
sake, that he was making the racket; for it was
high time he had a family and a house under way.

I think the thought of a family (flickers always
have enormous families!) must suddenly have
come to him as he hammered on the roof, for all
at once he darted off, and around to the end of
the barn, where he caught hold of the straight-up-
and-down boards and, bracing himself with Ms
spine-pointed tail, began to drill a hole.

How it sounded! Never before had he struck
anything with such a ring to it. What a glorious
hole for a nest there must be in there! Why, if
the brood should happen to come twenty strong
(which was not past hoping for), each young
flicker could have a bed and a room all to himself
— a condition of affairs altogether unheard of,
up to this time, in flickerdom.

16 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

How he managed to hang on to those smooth,
perpendicular boards, even though propped by
his sharp-pointed tail feathers, I could not see.
There was nothing but flat wall to hold to. Yet
there he clung, securely, and so firmly braced
that he was using his chisel-edged beak as a small,
but powerful, electric drill to bore through the
new inch-thick boards.

What a glorious hole for a nest there must be in there I

THE CRAZY FLICKER 17

I wish I could have seen the expression on his
face and read his thoughts when he got through
and found himself inside an empty barn. He
must have been the most amazed and mystified
bird in the region, if he was sane enough to think
at all. Instead of a neat, snug cavity sufficient
to turn round in, he had bored into an empty hay-
loft. Perhaps an English sparrow would not
have been daunted at the prospect of filling up a
liaymoiv with a nest, but the flicker was.

Or else he was not house-hunting, after all, but
simply a crazy flicker, crazy over holes. For now
his madness showed itself. Out he came, hopped
sidewise across a few boards, tapped, listened,
.and began a new hole. This, of course, opened
into the same mammoth cave. What of it? Not
where the hole opened, but the boring of it ; that
was the thing. So, hopping along to another
seam, he must have gone through again. And
not three times only. Day after day either he
or the other flickers in the neighborhood kept bor-
ing away, until soon the barn became riddled
with holes as if it had been used as a target for
cannon practice, shot through and through.

Crazy over holes! At least that is the way it
looked to me. It looked even worse than that to

18 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

my neighbor who owned the barn. He did not
build the barn for holes. He built it for hay.
And I think he thought the one sane thing that
flickers could make was pot-pie!

And I think that some city neighbors of mine
thought so too, when another crazy flicker took to
boring holes into their rain-pipes.

Now it is a very natural thing for a woodpecker
to peck holes in wood (the flicker belongs to the
woodpecker family, you know) — natural I should
say for him to peck holes into dead and hollow
trees; but quite unreasonable to drill holes into
big barns. Still barns are made of trees, are
built of wood, and are hollow, so that boring into
barns may not be very unnatural or very crazy
after all. But to bore into galvanized iron rain-
pipes — that is the work of stark madness; and
no one can blame the people who owned the rain-
pipes for thinking so.

What it was that drove this particular flicker
crazy I cannot say, unless, perhaps, it was noise.
Certainly drumming for hours on a rain-pipe is
enough to drive anything crazy; and this flicker
for hours every morning banged the sounding
pipes as if it were the Judgment-Day and he was
trying to wake the dead!

He found himself inside an empty barn

20 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

He did wake up everybody for a block around.
Nobody had seen a flicker in the neighborhood
since last October when suddenly the early March
morning was startled by a thunderous rat-ta-tat-
ta-tat inside of a big galvanized-iron chimney!
The people in their beds below jumped as if the
roof were falling in. The workmen hurrying
along the quiet streets halted to gaze around in
wonder. There was nothing to be seen. When
rat-ta-tat-ta-tat — the rattling, ringing roll again,
and up out of the chimney popped a flicker, hav-
ing a very fit of fun over this new drum !

Then across the way, on the top of a neighbor-
ing house, he spied another, larger drum, and gal-
loped over there. It was a big ventilator. He
hit it, and it boomed. Catching his toes around
an iron hoop that circled it, he began to beat a
roll to wake the town.

The mystery is that his bill did not fly into
splinters. But it did not. The sound, however,
went to his head. He got mad with the noise,
crazier and crazier over galvanized iron, until he
went to boring holes into the rain-pipe.

At the first it was love, doubtless, that ailed
him; he was drumming up a bride. But that
soon changed. He forgot all about brides, and

THE CRAZY FLICKER 21

fell in love with drumming. Nor is he the first
male bird I have known thus in love. In the
island park at Detroit, Michigan, I knew a red-
headed woodpecker to serenade himself long after
mating season — up, in fact, to September,
the time I left the park woods. He would get in-
side the zinc ventilator of the clubhouse and make
the island ring.

But let us get back to those rain-pipes. It
was several days after his arrival before the peo-
ple knew the damage this crazy flicker was doing.
At first they had looked upon him as a harmless,
ardent lover who preferred to serenade his lady
upon a sounding iron chimney rather than to
twang a dead limb for his guitar. They were
amused. Everybody loves a lover — until he be-
gins to bore holes into rain-pipes.

And that is what this lover soon began to do.
Instead of a lover the bird was a lunatic, for what
was seen one morning but that bird high up under
the corner of the roof, clutching a small bracket
in the side of the house, and drilling a hole
through the rain-pipe!

He was hammering like a tinsmith, and al-
ready, when discovered, had cut a hole half as
big as one's fist. He had not tried to drill be-

22 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

fore; he had been happy merely hammering.
Something, however, either the size, or shape, or
ring of the pipe, suggested "holes" to his wild
wits, and right through the pipe he had gone.

It was not grubs that he was after. Maybe
somewhere in his mad head was the remote no-
tion of a nest. Where, however, could he have
found a mate as crazy as himself — crazy enough
to have built in such a place ? Young Mrs. Flicker
is an exceedingly spoony bride; love in a cottage
is just to her liking; but I have yet to see one who
would go to the length of a rain-pipe.

The crazy bird was finally scared away, leaving
several indignant citizens behind, who heartily
wished they had taken the law into their own
hands when the bird began to show his tendency
to attack galvanized iron and tin.

THE WILD GEESE

CHAPTER III

THE WILD GEESE

IF you have always lived in a large city, then
doubtless you have never heard the honkers.
They pass over the cities, as they pass over the
country, but the noise of the city, even at dead of
night, would prevent your hearing the honk, honk,
honk as the flock of wild geese steers its way un-
der the stars and clouds high over the city roofs.

Sometime you must hear them going over.
Some starry night in November you may be cross-
ing a wide pasture field alone when all is silent
about you. The frosts have hushed the grass-
hoppers and crickets and katydids, the field birds
have gone south, the rattling farm wagons on the
distant roads have all passed by, the wind is down,
and the fields all around are still.

Suddenly, out of the dark, faraway blue toward
the polar star, sounds a faint clanging, clamorous
sound as of several persons shouting, as of sev-

25

26 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

eral bells ringing in confusion, growing louder,
clearer, more ringing, clanging, clangorous, until
down from the stars overhead falls the round
trumpet call of honk honk honk honk, as the flock
with measured wing tread, speeds along its star-
lit highway from the arctic toward the tropic zone.

You stand in your tracks, your face turned
toward the stars, your breath held, your eyes un-
seeing, your ears straining to catch the thrilling
message that seems calling from star to star.

Out of the north it comes, and you hear the cry
of the north— the howl of winds, the crash of floes,
the thunder of splitting icebergs; then on into
the south it goes, this thrilling call, and you hear
the voice of the south — the whisper of winds
among the reeds, the lap of waves on the shore,
the song of birds, the hum of bees, the breathing
of the jessamin and orange blossoms.

The strange cloud-call comes and goes and
leaves you listening to two worlds, the boreal world
and the tropic world. The call comes and goes
and leaves you with a wild, wild thrill in your
heart, and a wild, wilcl desire for something — for
wings, it seems, so that you too may cross the
cloudy highway that swings through the stars
around the world.

THE WILD GEESE 27

You hear them going south in the fall. Then
you may hear them going north in the spring.
For the wild geese, like so many other birds that
breed in the north, are migratory; that is they go
south at the approach of cold weather and north
again when warm weather comes on.

In February the Canada geese are scattered
along the margins of our southern lakes and riv-
ers, already preparing for their flight northward
to Canada, Labrador, and Alaska. Early spring
finds them back in their northern breeding-haunts
with nests well under way. Then, by September,
the long return flight begins, the flocks passing
over the Middle States for a month or more, but
all reaching the warm shores of the South by the
time our northern waters are closed with ice.

The journey in the spring is a honeymoon trip;
in the fall it is a family excursion. The wild
geese mate for life. Nothing of the turkey gob-
bler's jealousy and viciousness is shown by the
wild gander ; the female goose does not steal away
from her mate to make her nest. She and he are
"engaged" before the long spring flight begins.
They sail away in company with other like lovers
to wed and go off together as soon as they reach
the northern nesting-meadows.

28 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Housekeeping for the geese is a particularly
serious business. The gander takes his full share
of the trouble. He never shirks nor leaves his
mate. Day and night he stands on duty, guard-
ing the mother and the nest — with his life if need
be— against all enemies. He even helps hatch
the eggs, which is being faithful indeed.

The nest is a collection of driftweed and sticks
lined with down, and placed, usually, on the
ground in a marsh or meadow. Occasionally it
is upon a stump, or even up in some old fish-
hawk's nest on the top of a tree.

As soon as the goslings hatch they take to the
water, and then life for goose and gander grows
tangled fast with trouble.

I once watched a pair of geese in captivity, as
they were led about by their one small gosling —
their only one left out of a brood of seven. From
sunrise to nightfall their anxious day was spent
trying to keep up with Master Gosling. He went
whither he would ; and they side by side waddled
along behind, cautioning, chiding and complain-
ing. So hurried were they that there was no time
to snatch a blade of grass or a billful of water, as
the troublesome infant straddled up and down his
backyard world.

THE WILD GEESE

29

| It is well along in August before the young are

/ able to fly. All this time the parents have cared

for them. They will continue to keep them to-

Housekeeping for the geese is a particularly serious business

gether as a family during the southern flight and
on until the next spring.
No phase of the life of these great birds is so

30 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

pleasing as the thought of this family life — gan-
der, goose, and goslings a united family even
while mingling with others as part of some large
flock. Every wedge of wild geese that flies trum-
peting overhead in the autumn is either a family,
or a neighborhood of families, led by some strong
old gander.

The great event in the goose calendar is this
autumn flight. The life of all the rest of the year
seems to be a getting ready for this. They must
fly south in order to find food and to' escape the
deadly cold, but they must take the flight because
of its own sake now, for it has become a fever in
their bones.

For weeks previous to the departure, restless-
ness and strange desires possess the birds. It is
the flight-fever, the fever for a flight a mile high,
for a thousand miles, past the snowy landscapes
to a new green world!

The love of it is far more than the desire for
food. Next to the need of mate and offspring
is the need for this flight. It is not a desire of
the flesh, but of the spirit. Food does not fail
in the farm-yard; yet the tame Canada geese,
when the nights grow crisp and the wild flocks go
honking over, will scream and run and flap their

THE WILD GEESE 31

crippled wings with the same wild longing to fly
away — high and far and long into the air.

It is little that most of us in the middle states
know of the wild geese besides this passing. But
who has not seen the wonderful wedge, like a har-
row moving across the sky, or the long file, like a
strange many-oared racing shell, swimming the
clouds I Who has not heard the thrilling trumpet-
call out of the star-depths of the silent autumn
night ?

Yes, even in the heart of a vast city I have
awakened at the cloud-echoed cry, far off, weird,
and haunting.

High and swift as they move, their flight is still
a long and dangerous one. For the bird is flesh
and such speed rapidly exhausts him. His wings
must rest. The flier must have food. And
awaiting him on the earth is a line of enemies as
long and as continuous as his journey.

Fogs obscure the way; storms hinder; noises
confuse ; and often, most dangerous of all, across
the brittle, bracing air of the course blows a thick,
warm wind that sends the whole flock reeling and
sagging exhausted to the earth. Hundreds of
geese one day, overcome by a sudden heat-wave,
dropped upon a small pond back of my home, and

32 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

when the village turned out to the slaughter, the
poor things even scattered to the neighboring
fields, too weak and heavy to rise higher than the
tree-tops.

There is not a single event in all the year of
the fields that I would not sooner forego than the
sight and sound of the flying geese. How it takes
hold of the imagination! There is no vivider
passage in all of Audubon than his description of
the flight:

"As each successive night the hoar-frosts cover
the country, and the streams are closed over by
the ice, the family joins that in their neighbor-
hood, which is also joined by others. At length
they espy the advance of a snow-storm, when
the ganders with one accord sound the order for
their departure.

"After many wide circlings, the flock has risen
high in the thin air, and an hour or more is spent
in teaching the young the order in which they are
to move. But now the host has been marshaled,
and off it starts. The old males advance in front,
the females follow, the young come in succession
according to their strength, the weakest forming
the rear. Should one feel fatigued, his position
is changed in the ranks, and he assumes a place

THE WILD GEESE 33

in the wake of another, who cleaves the air before
him; perhaps the parent bird flies for a while by
his side to encourage him."

What meaning, and yet what mystery, that line
of winging geese has for us when we remember
all of this !

I want you to hear them going over this fall,
and again and again as the autumns come and go.
Then I want you to learn by heart the whole of
this beautiful poem by William Cullen Bryant,
so that every time you hear the honking of the
wild geese you can repeat these lines :

TO A WATERFOWL

Whither, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way ?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast —
The desert and illimitable air —

Lone wandering, but not lost.

34 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet on my heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who. from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

THE WOOD-PUSSY

CHAPTER IV

THE WOOD-PUSSY

LATE one afternoon I was reading by the side
of a little ravine on an island in Casco Bay.
The sharp, rocky walls of the ravine were shaded
by scrub trees and overhung with dewberry vines.
The tide was ebbing, and presently the faint
swash of the waves on the rocky shore was broken
by a stir among the dried leaves far down be-
low me.

Creeping cautiously to the edge, I looked down,
and there, in a little door-yard of their own, I saw
a family of seven young skunks.

They were about three weeks old, and were
playing some kind of a rough-and-tumble game,
just like kittens. Funny little bunches of black
and white they were, with sharp-pointed noses,
beady black eyes, and very large tails. Their
color was jet black, except for white tips to their
tails, and a pure white mark beginning on the
tops of their heads and dividing down their sides
like the letter V.

37

38 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Not one of them had seen that I was watching
them, and so their play went on. I said they were
playing like kittens. No, not like kittens, but like
little stuffed Teddy bears, or wabbly little lambs
on straw legs or wooden legs. Only the baby
skunks did not seem to have legs at all, so sawed-
off and stubby were they, so fat and round were
their little humpty-dumpty bodies. They fell over
the brier-vines ; they fell over the stones ; they fell
over each other ; they fell over their paws ; they fell
over their very shadows it seemed. Their only
way of getting up was by tumbling down; and if
they wanted to go to this spot or that their surest,
quickest way was just to upset and tumble there.

But it was real play, as real play as your prison-
ers' base or duck-on-davy. Yet it differed from
your play because it was silent. Suppose you all go
out at recess and try a game of hocky or wood-tag
without making a single sound. With lips shut,
and on your toes, try to scurry about, your eyes
keen to watch for something that is going to gob-
ble you up; your ears keen to hear him coming.
Suddenly some one holds up a warning finger, and
instantly you dive in the schoolhouse or " freeze"
in your tracks. Do you think you could do it I

Think of having to play without any noise!

There . . . was a family of seven young skunks

40 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Why, it would be almost as bad as trying to
breathe without breathing, would it not! Yet
that is the way wild animals have been taught to
play — on their soft little tip-toes, mouths shut,
but eyes and ears wide open, and every muscle
ready instantly for a dive into their holes.

And that is the way these baby skunks were
playing. There was a faint stirring of dead
leaves, and now and then a faint little hiss of an-
ger. And once, when one of the little rolly-pollies
got a bump that hurt him, he got very angry, and
there was a fuss in a twinkling.

He stamped his fore feet, showed his little milk
teeth, humped up his back and turned both ends
of his tiny body, like a pinched wasp, toward
every one of his brothers that came near him.
They all knew what that peculiar twist to both
ends of his body meant, and kept their distance.
I knew what it meant too. These young things
had already learned their lesson of self-defense.
A three-weeks-old baby skunk could hold his own
against anything.

I lay so long watching them that by and by the
dusk began to deepen in the ravine. Night was at
hand. I must be going, and was about to draw
back, so as not to frighten them, when, slowly out

--

They all followed her

42 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

from beneath a point of the ledge came a long
black snout, and then the mother of the family —
old Mrs. Wood-Pussy.

I did not budge. Out she came, and passing
the children by without so much as a sniff, made
off around a rock. But if she did not look at them,
they did not apparently look at her. Had she
been a fox her babies would have had her by the
tail right off, and she would have had to nip them
sharply to make them behave ; but the old skunk
crawled out and made off without a word or sign
to her family or from them.

But they all followed her, and tagging along
one after another, they made off down the ravine
for their suppers of mice, and grubs, sweet corn
or — chickens! I hope it was not chickens. For
the skunk is one of our best mousers, killing great
numbers of mice in the fields and woods; he is
also a great destroyer of harmful insects. But
he will eat chicken if he finds it. Anybody will,
in fact. So I hope it was not toward one of the
chicken coops on the island that the family were
going, for they ought not to be killed; they do
much more good than harm.

I don't know where they went before morning,
for darkness had come, and I could not follow

THE WOOD-PUSSY 43

them. Perhaps they climbed out of their ravine
and wandered up through the dark to the door-
yard under my bedroom window; for during the
night the sea wind came in with a pungent breath
that was not brought from the gulf stream; a
breath that told me the wood-pussy was roaming
abroad over the island and had passed beneath
my open window.

A HOUSE OF MANY DOORS

CHAPTER V

A HOUSE OF MANY DOOBS

WILL you look carefully at the little picture
on this page to see if you can make out
fish-hawks, "crow "-blackbirds and an English
sparrow — two English sparrows? This picture
is of a fish-hawk's nest in whose rough, uneven
walls were a whole colony of smaller nests.

I know of a large tenement house in the city of
Boston, where people of thirteen different nation-
alities are living. The ends of the earth gath-
ered together under one roof ! There were not so
many kinds of jabbering tongues in the whole of
the ancient city of Babel, I am sure.

Every great city nowadays is a whole small
world; and every great city tenement house is a
whole smaller world. The whole world is trying

47

48 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

to get into every large city, though there simply
seems not enough room even with crowding.

That is not so of the wide open country. There
is plenty of room in the country — for every bird
to have a nest tree all to himself, you would think.
Yet here is the picture of a fish-hawk's nest down
along the shores of Delaware Bay, in which live,
besides the fish-hawks, a small community of crow-
blackbirds, and two families of English sparrows.

Now it happens that this nest tree of the fish-
hawks is the only tree close around that particu-
lar spot, but there are other trees in sight, a whole
forest in fact. It is not because there is no room
in the neighborhood that the blackbirds and spar-
rows have moved in with the fish-hawks.

Moreover, this huge nest of the hawks, planted
firmly upon the very top of a tall oak that stands
almost alone on the edge of a vast salt-marsh, is
not the natural nesting-place for blackbirds and
sparrows. This marsh-land is the range of the
hawks. They are at home here. The blackbirds
and sparrows, for some reason, have broken away
from the inland. The blackbirds have nested
here, to my knowledge, for thirteen years; the
sparrows discovered the great nest only a year
ago.

A HOUSE OF MANY DOORS 49

The walls of the nest are as big around as a
hogshead and as rough as the protruding ends of
corn-stalks, dead limbs, and small cord-wood can
make them. It is around in the crevices of these
jagged walls that the blackbirds and sparrows
lodge their nests.

I am by no means certain that all is harmonious
in this queer colony. There was no appearance
of discord — none but the presence of the spar-
rows. The blackbirds and hawks might get on
peaceably together; but what saint among the
birds could live peaceably with an English spar-
row?

Neither am I sure why these small birds choose
to live thus with the hawks. They are both in-
dependent birds, not hangers-on at all; so it can-
not be the mere convenience of a ready-made
nesting-site. That could be had anywhere; be-
sides, naturally, neither grackles (another name
for these crow-blackbirds) nor sparrows would
fly far away into a marsh in looking for a place
to build. It cannot be that they come for the bits
of fish left after the young hawks have eaten.
They are not particularly fond of fish, and there
would not be crumbs enough to make their coming
worth while, anyway.

50 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

I believe the blackbirds are like the tenement
people: they enjoy living in a tenement. There
are extraordinary social advantages in a big,
round hawk's nest — fine chances for company and
gossip.

At least I hope it is for friendly interest and
good-fellowship. I can believe that the hawks
enjoy the cheerful clatter of the garrulous crow-
blacks and perhaps even the small impertinences
of the sparrows. And on their side, the crow-
blacks and sparrows feel a certain protection, per-
haps, in the presence of the hawks, and may, who
knows, appreciate the friendship of such high and
mighty folk.

Quite as interesting and unusual a show of
friendship, at least of friendliness, was seen re-
cently by bird-lovers on a telephone-pole in a
thickly settled town not far from my home.

There were poles in plenty sticking up all over
the surrounding country; but passing by all of
these, a pair of flickers, a pair of chickadees, and
a pair of red-headed woodpeckers selected the
same pole for their nests, prepared their holes,
hatched and brought up their large, noisy families
together, without a single quarrel so far as the
curious public knew. And they did all this with

Tall black cormorants, great foam-white gulls

52 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

persons coining from far and near to stare at
them through opera-glasses; for the red-headed
woodpeckers were the only pair with such heads
reported that season anywhere around.

Some day the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
the Bible says, which, of course, is much more of
a wonder than what I saw one summer on the
great bird rocks in the Pacific ocean just off the
coast of Oregon. But there on the Three Arch-
Rocks I saw murres and cormorants, and puffins
and guillemots, and stormy petrels, and gulls liv-
ing in colonies, tens of thousands of them,
crowded together on the bare rocks just as tight
as they could squeeze.

No city tenement was ever crowded with dwell-
ers as was each of these three huge rocks. It
seemed to me that there must have been a hun-
dred thousand pairs of birds housekeeping on
each of those rocks — houses of a hundred thou-
sand doors.

But the most interesting thing about the
crowded life in these vast tenements was. the liv-
ing, side by side, up on the bare wind-swept sum-
mit, of the cormorants and gulls, sworn enemies.
Sworn enemies, I say, yet both kinds of colonies
were thriving. Nevertheless, let the mother or

A HOUSE OF MANY DOORS 53

father cormorant leave the nest of babies unpro-
tected for one instant and down swoops the baby-
eating gull and gobbles them up.

Yes, gobbles them, swallows them whole. Then
would you not say it was strange to see a cormo-
rant's nest full of growing babies, and two feet
away on the same shelf of rock, a gull's nest full
of growing babies, especially with the old gulls
watching every minute to pounce upon the young
cormorants? Strange enough.

But the old cormorants never give the greedy
gulls a chance to pounce upon their babies. For,
when one cormorant goes off to sea for fish, the
mate is standing by to spread its wings over its
young to protect them from their enemy. They
are never for an instant left uncovered.

So here are their nests, side by side, as close as
plates on a dinner table ; and here the birds multi-
ply and people the rocks — tall black cormorants,
great foam-white gulls — so eternally watchful are
the parent cormorants.

A baby cormorant is never out of its father's
or mother's arms — not until it is too big for the
gobbling gulls to swallow.

WILD LIFE IN THE FAEM-YAED

CHAPTER VI

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD

I WANT you to visit a farm where there are
turkeys and geese and guineas. If you live
in New York City or in Chicago you may not be
able to do so for some time. Then take a trip to
the market or to the zoological gardens. But
most of you live close enough to the country, so
that you could easily find a farmer who would in-
vite you out to see his prize gobbler and his great
hissing gander.

However, I shall not wait to send you ; for I am
going to take you — now — out to an old farm that
I loved as a boy, where there are turkeys and

57

58 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

geese and guineas and pigs and pigeons, cows and
horses and mules, cats and dogs, chickens and
bees and sheep, and a hornets' nest and a nest
of flying squirrels in the same old grindstone ap-
ple-tree, and a pair of barn owls in the old wagon
house, and — I don't know what else; for there
was everything on the old farm when I was a boy,
and I suppose we shall find everything there yet.

I want you to see the turkeys. I want you to
follow an old hen turkey to her stolen nest. I
want you to watch the old gobbler turkey take his
family to bed — to roost, I mean. For unless you
are a boy, and are living in the wild portions of
Georgia and the southeastern states, you may
never see a wild turkey. For that reason I want
you to watch this tame turkey, because he is al-
most as wild as a wild turkey in everything ex-
cept his fear of you. He has been tamed, we
know, since the year 1526, yet not one of his wild
habits has been changed.

So it is with the house cat. We have tamed
the house cat, but we have not changed the wild,
night-prowling hunter in him. You have to
smooth a cat the right way, or the wild cat in him
will scratch and bite you. Have you never seen
his tail twitch, his eyes blaze, his claws work as

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD 59

he lias crouched watching at a rat's hole, or
crawled stealthily upon a bird in the meadow
grass I

So, if you will watch, you shall see a real wild
turkey in the tamest old gobbler on the farm.

Watch him go to roost. Watch him get ready
to go to roost, I should say, for a turkey seems to
begin to think of roosting about noon-time, espe-
cially in the winter; and it takes him from about
noon till night to make up his mind that he really
must go to roost.

He comes along under the apple-tree of a De-
cember afternoon and looks up at the leafless
limbs where he has been roosting since summer.
He stretches his long neck, lays his little brainless
head over on one side, then over on the other.
He takes a good long look at the limb. Then bobs
his head — one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-
nine-ten times, or perhaps twenty-two or -three
times, and takes a still longer look at the limb,
saying to himself — quint, quint, quint, quint!
which means: "I think I '11 go to roost! I think
I'll go to roost! I think I'll go to roost! I
think I '11 go to roost! I think I '11 go to roost!
I think I '11 go to roost!" He thinks he will, but
he has n't made up his mind quite.

60 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Then he stretches his long neck again, lays his
little witless head on the side again, bobs and
bobs, looks and looks and looks, says quint, quint,
quint, quint — "I think I '11 go to roost," but is just
as undecided as ever.

He does the performance over and over again
and would never go to roost if the darkness did
not come and compel him. He would stand under
that tree stretching, turning, looking, bobbing,
"quinting," thinking, until he thought his head
off, saying all the while —

One for the money ; two for the show ;

Three to get ready; and four to — get ready to go!

But after a while, along toward dusk (and aw-
fully suddenly!) — fop! gobble! splutter! ivhoop!
— and there he is, up on the limb, safe! Eeally
safe ! But it was an exceedingly close call.

And this is the very way the wild turkey acts.
The naturalists who had a chance to study the
great flocks of wild turkeys years ago describe
these same absurd actions. This lack of snap
and decision is not something the tame turkey has
learned in the farm-yard. The fact is he does
not seem to have learned anything during his 350
years in the barn-yard, nor does he seem to have

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD 61

forgotten anything that he knew as a wild turkey
in the woods, except his fear of man.

Late in October the wild turkeys of a given
neighborhood would get together in flocks of
from ten to a hundred and travel on foot through
the rich bottom-lands in search of food. In these
journeys the males would go ahead, apart from the
females, and lead the way. The hens, each con-
ducting her family in a more or less separate
group, came straggling leisurely along in the rear.
As they advanced, they would meet other flocks,
thus swelling their numbers.

After a time they were sure to come to a river
— a dreadful thing, for, like the river of the old
song, it was a river to cross. Up and down the
banks would stalk the gobblers, stretching their
necks out over the water and making believe to
start, as they do when going to roost in the apple-
trees.

All day long, all the next day, all the third day,
if the river was wide, they would strut and cluck
along the shore, making up their minds.

The ridiculous creatures have wings; they can
fly; but they are afraid! After all these days,
however, the whole flock has mounted the tallest

62

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

trees along the bank. One of the gobblers has
come forward as leader in the emergency. Sud-
denly, from his perch, he utters a single cluck, —
the signal for the start, — and every turkey sails
into the air. There is a great flapping — and the
terrible river is crossed.

A few weak members fall on the way over, but
not to drown. Drawing their wings close in
against their sides, and spreading their round
fan-like tails to the breeze, they strike out as if
born to swim, and come quickly to land.

The tame turkey-hen is notorious for stealing her nest

WILD LIFE IN THE FAKM-YARD 63

The tame turkey-hen is notorious for stealing
her nest. The wild hen steals hers — not to plague
her owner, of course, as is the common be-
lief about the domestic turkey, but to get away
from the gobbler, who, in order to prolong the
honeymoon, will break the eggs as fast as they
are laid. He has just enough brains to be senti-
mental, jealous, and boundlessly fond of himself.
His wives, too, are foolish enough to worship him,
until — there is an egg in the nest. That event
makes them wise. They understand this strut-
ting coxcomb, and quietly turning their backs on
him, leave him to parade alone.

There are crows, also, and buzzards from whom
the wild turkey hen must hide the eggs. Nor dare
she forget her own danger while sitting, for there
are foxes, owls, and prowling lynxes ready enough
to pounce upon her. On the farm there are still
many of these enemies besides the worst of them
all, the farmer himself.

For a nest the wild hen, like the tame turkey
of the pasture, scratches a slight depression in
the ground, usually under a thick bush, sometimes
in a hollow log, and there lays from twelve to
twenty eggs, which are somewhat smaller and
more elongated than the tame turkey's, but of the

64 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

same color: dull cream, sprinkled with reddish
dots.

I have often hunted for stolen turkey nests, and
hunted in vain, because the cautious mother
had covered her eggs when leaving them. This
is one of the wild habits that has persisted. The
wild hen, as the hatching approaches, will not
trust even this precaution, however, but remains
without food and drink upon the nest until the
chicks can be led off. She can scarcely be driven
from the nest, often allowing herself to be cap-
tured first.

Mother-love burns fierce in her. Such helpless
things are her chicks! She hears them peeping
in the shell and breaks it to help them out. She
preens and dries them and keeps them close un-
der her for days.

Not for a wreek after they are hatched does she
allow them out in a rain. If, after that, they get a
cold wetting, the wild mother, it is said, will feed
the buds of the spice-bush to her brood, as our
grandmothers used to administer mint tea to us.

The tame hen does seem to have lost something
of this wild-mother skill, doubtless because for
many generations she has been entirely freed of
the larger part of the responsibility.

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD 65

I never knew a tame mother turkey to doc-
tor her infants for vermin. But the wild hen
will. The woods are full of ticks and detestable
vermin as deadly as cold rains. When her brood
begins to lag and pine, the wild mother knows,
and leading them to some old ant-hill, she gives
them a sousing dust-bath. The vermin hate the
odor of the ant-scented dust, and after a series of
these baths disappear.

This is wise ; and if this report be true, then the
wild turkey is as wise and far-seeing a mother as
the woods contain. One observer even tells of
three hens that stole off together and fixed up a
nest between themselves. Each put in her eggs —
forty-two in all — and each took turns guarding,
so that the nest was never left alone.

What special enemy caused this unique part-
nership the naturalist does not say. The three
mothers built together, brooded together, and to-
gether guarded the nest. But how did those
three mothers divide the babies?

I said I wanted you to visit a farm where there
are turkeys. And you will have to if you would
see the turkey at home. For, though I have trav-
eled through the South, and been in the swamps
and river "bottoms" there all along the Savan-

66 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

nah, with wild turkeys around me I have never
seen a live one.

I was in a small steamboat on the Savannah
River one night. We were tied up till morning
along the river bank under the trees of the deep
swamp. Twilight and the swamp silence had set-
tled about us. The moon came up. A banjo had
been twanging, but the breakdown was done, the
shuffling feet quiet. The little cotton-boat had
become a part of the moonlit silence and the
river swamp.

Two or three roustabouts were lounging upon
some rosin-barrels near by, under the spell of the
round autumnal moon. There was frost in the'
air, and fragrant odors, but not a sound, not a
cry or call of beast or bird, until, suddenly, break-
ing through the silence with a jarring eery echo,
was heard the hoot of the great horned owl.

One of the roustabouts dropped quickly to the
deck and held up his hand for silence. We all lis-
tened. And again came the uncanny Whoo-hoo-
hoo-whoo-you-oh-oh!

"Dat ol' King Owl," whispered the darky.
"Him 's lookin' fer turkey. OP gobbler done
gone hid, I reckon. Listen! 01' King Owl gwine
make oP gobbler talk back."

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD 67

We listened, but there was no frightened "gob-
ble" from the tree-tops. There were wild tur-
keys all around me in the swamp; but, though I
sat up until the big southern moon rode high
overhead, I heard no answer, no challenge to the
echoing hoot of the great owl. The next day a
colored boy brought aboard the boat a wild turkey
which he had shot in the swamp; but I am still
waiting to see and hear the great bronze bird alive
in its native haunts.

A SONG OF THE WINTER WOODS

CHAPTER VII

A SONG OF THE WINTER WOODS

The oaks are green, the laurels gay,

The blithe birds sing the bright day long;

The pines are green and gay as they,
And full of murmuring song.

The oaks are bare, the laurels stark;

The birds to warmer lands have flown;
The pines are green and singing — Hark !

Their song makes sweeter moan.

For summer rich and winter lean,

O pine-tree, stalwart, straight and strong,

Give me the strength that keeps thee green,
The grace that gives thee song.

VTTERE you to ask me, "Which day in all the
V? year is best for a trip to the woods?" I
could only answer, "Any day, every day, summer
or winter, — the day you long to go." For when
you long to go, then there is usually a need for
you to go; and no needy heart was ever turned
by the woods empty away. But many a heart
that knows and loves the summer woods, has
never found joy in the winter woods, has never
seen their glory, nor heard their song.
71

72 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

This is because seeing glories and hearing
songs when the sky is dark and the birds are gone
is somewhat difficult. It requires an eye and an
ear for other things than mere things. The sum-
mer woods are full of things; there are things
enough, indeed, in the winter woods, if one must
have things, but what are the winter woods but
an escape from things?

The wild bird does not beat at the bars of its
cage because it wants to be free to find a certain
seed, or fly to a certain spot, or meet a certain
flock of its kind. No, it simply longs to be free —
to be out of the narrow cage into the wide free
sky on its buoyant wings. So you turn to the
open woods and fields, not for this or that, but
because you want to go — to be free for a day,
to wander and range with the wide sky over you,
with the natural earth beneath you, with the
mighty forms of the trees about you, with the
many voices, odors, shapes and vistas accom-
panying you and beckoning you on.

Now, when that feeling comes upon you, do not
wait for a summer day; do not wait for a pleas-
ant day. Go forth rain or shine, summer or win-
ter, into the heart of the woods.

I have always lived where I could easily reach

The frozen winter fields

74 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

the deep woods; I have tramped afield the year
around; but since my earliest boyhood it has
been with a keener zest1 in winter than in summer.

And that is not because I was a boy. A live
boy loves the woods ; but so does a live girl. Give
a live girl equal chance and she will love every
thing that a live boy loves — the woods and the
winter as though she were a boy.

No, I love the winter woods, because, to begin
with, there is more wideness to the winter, more
wildness too. Upland and lowland, field and
wood-lot, creek and meadow are thrown wide open
and all abandoned, all left to the wild things, to
the wayward winds, and to your own wild, way-
ward feet.

Fields where corn and melons grew in sum-
mer, and where the farmer kept a suspicious eye
upon you as you came near, are forsaken now.
.JfThey are yours for the tramping. Their fences
'are no dividing line, no barrier, no warning. Do
the winter winds mind fences? or the winter
snows? or the wings of the winter owls? or the
prowling feet of the winter mink? No more do
the feet of a boy on the frozen winter fields.

What of it if all day long you hear no cry of
bird, you see no sign of life — nothing but the

A SONG OF THE WINTER WOODS

75

hard bare earth, or the endless stretch of snow?
I have just returned from such a winter walk —
of mile after mile through snow-laden woods,
across snow-covered meadows, over snow-hung

Upland and lowland, field and wood-lot

ledges without seeing anything alive. Nor did I
wish to see anything alive. For I was alive,
warm, throbbing, abounding with life that faced
the biting wind, that laughed at the bitter cold,
that reached out toward the snowy miles with
hunger for them.

Alive ? Was I not alive ? Were not the winds,

76 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

the cold, the trackless miles alive? Did they not
pursue and fight me, showing their savage fangs
on my trail as they have showed them on every
human trail since human feet first dared to break
a track into the wilderness?

Not even a chickadee was heard in the silence of
the woods; I did not see a single animal track
in the new snow. Was it then an empty, fruit-
less walk? No, for I went out to feel things, as
well as to see things. I went out to meet the
woods, to breast the winds, to dare the chill, to
subdue the long hard distances of swamp and
pasture. I went out just to be out, to be afield,
to beat the hot blood into my feet on the frozen
ground; to stand off the cold; to catch a breath,
as I topped a hill, out of the very teeth of the bit-
ing wind.

I took no gun, because every creature out-of-
doors was on my side in this fight against the
cold. I took no dog; I wanted no companion; I
must fight it out alone — alone against the wild-
ness out of doors, against the mighty forces of
the North for the victory of life, — to defy, to live,
to glow with the mighty joy of life !

There are other tempers, other moods of
the winter woods that answer to feelings and

A SONG OF THE WINTER WOODS 77

thoughts within us as the happier, softer sum-
mer never can. The thoughts of youth are long,
long thoughts; solemn, serious thoughts very
often, that find themselves at home in the silence
and dim gray twilight of the winter woods. The
leafless trees, the flattened, faded marsh, the wind-
swept hills, how bare and simple and real they
are! how natural and frank and honest! It is
easy to see them whole, easy to understand them,
easy to believe and love them.

Summer and winter I have tramped the woods.
I have brought back many a happy observation,
many a rare flower, many a partridge and fat
'possum, many a rabbit and muskrat. But none
of these was the best that I got from my tramps.
The best things I never carried home in my hands,
1)ut in my heart; and when my hands were empty,
•as often they were in the winter, my heart as
often was full.

In the summer there would be so much to see,
so much to carry home in my hands, that I often
had no time to think of anything to put into my
heart. But in the winter, what had I except my
thoughts, those long, long thoughts! And where
could I carry them but in my heart ?

You ask me what they were? and what I did

78

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

with them? I answer, they were poems. Those
rare best things brought home with me from the
winter woods were poems; poems that I shall
never be able to write ; but poems, for all of that,
which I shall forever feel.

I have tried, now and then, to write them down
in words. But the words of a poem are not the
important thing. I have set some of the words
of those poems down here at the beginning and
end of this chapter to show you that I really tried
to write the poems. The words, I fear, are
taken from the dictionary; but the poems, that is

The dim gray twilight of the winter

A SONG OF THE WINTER WOODS 79

the thoughts, the emotions, I know, were found in
the winter woods. The world is full of poets who
cannot write; and the woods, the winter woods,
are full of poems that you need never try to write.

It is now many years since these verses here at
the end were written, and many, many years since
they were first felt.

I remember the night very well. I was quite a
small boy. The crows began to go over early
that afternoon, long, long lines of them, into the
thick pine trees at the head of Cubby Hollow.
As the last stragglers of the flock passed, and the
early twilight deepened, I followed the birds
across the frozen fields to their roost in the dark
pines.

Were there a hundred thousand crows in the
roost? More, many more than a hundred thou-
sand, I should say. The trees were black with
them — so crowded with them, that as I crept
softly over the mat of pine-needles on the ground
I could reach into the smaller trees and touch the
weary sleepers.

The moon came up ; the wind rose ; and over me
in the tall trees swayed the muffled black forms.

They were only crows and pine trees. It was
only a cold winter night. I was only a school-

80 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

boy. But I was more than a school-boy too. No
boy is only a school-boy. Every boy is part poet.
And any boy, creeping like a shadow over the si-
lent carpet of those dark winter woods, could have
heard —

The wild winds softly close the door;
A shadow steals across the floor ;
And sweetly o'er the cradles pour
The balm of sleep.

And all is dark — the room and hall,
Except the sifted moonbeams fall
Between the rifted rafters tall
Into the gloom.

The house is hushed ; the lamps burn low ;
And moving figures come and go,
And touch the cradles — to ana fro —
Within the room.

They sleep. They dream and dreaming sigh,
"Sleep on," a murmur makes reply,
"The mother to her child is nigh —
The night is long."

With head beneath a raven wing
They sleep — nor hear the wild gales sing;
They sleep — nor feel the tossed tree fling
Their cradle far.

So I shall nestle 'neath a wing
Where storms and Stars together sing,
Where woods and worlds together swing —
When I shall sleep.

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL

FROSTY weather and ripe persimmons had
come, with Thanksgiving close at hand.
Uncle Jethro and I were husking corn.

"What had you rather have for your Thanks-
giving dinner, Uncle Jeth," I asked, "a big tur-
key gobbler or a nice young fat gander I ' '

The old darky stopped short, dropped his ear
of corn to the ground, and looked me over as if he
meant to have me for a dinner.

1 ' Gobbler ! Gander ! ' ' That was what he said ;
but what he meant was : * ' Don't you give me any
gobbling old turkey! Don't you bring me any
hissing old gander! Your Uncle Jethro won't

84 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

touch them. He won't eat anything on Thanks-
giving Day but 'possum!" No, he only said
''Gobbler! Gander!" but he meant " 'Possum."

I was humbly apologetic, and quick with my
promise to bring Uncle Jethro a big, fat 'possum
for his Thanksgiving dinner, if there was one left
in the woods of New Jersey.

We had finished husking the shock of corn and
I had gone on ahead, broken the binding on the
next shock and pushed it over, while Uncle Jethro
was kicking the stray ears we had just husked into
the pile.

As the stalks tumbled I looked down to see the
mice run, when, to my astonishment, I saw, curled
up in a bed of corn-blades, an enormous old 'pos-
sum. He had taken this shock of cornstalks for
his winter home, and had made his nest at its very
center, snug and warm and weather-proof.

He had been sound asleep as the shock tumbled
over, but as the glaring light burst upon him he
half uncurled, yawned, and blinked, yet showed
no sign of surprise or the least intention of get-
ting up. It was very inconvenient to have one's
house pulled down like this about one's ears, and
wouldn't I be gentleman enough now to spare
him at least his bed?

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL 85

"Uncle Jeth!" I called, as calmly as I knew
how. "Uncle Jeth, would you mind if I brought
you that Thanksgiving 'possum to-day?"

"Mind, child, mind?" he chuckled. "Old
Jethro shutting his door on Br'er 'Possum?
Fetch him up, honey, fetch him up. Jethro will
take him in."

"Well, how will this one do?" I exclaimed,
catching the 'possum, with a quick grab, by the
tail and, as Uncle Jethro started toward me, lift-
ing him up fairly under the old man's nose.

"De golden chariot am a-coming!" gasped Un-
cle Jethro, jumping back, his unbelieving eyes
bulging half out of his head. " 'Possum! You
is de beatenes' boy, you is."

No, I had not been hunting last night and hid-
den the 'possum here as a surprise. I had not
played a joke upon Uncle Jethro, as he himself
saw immediately on examining the creature's bed.

The great fat fellow had slept in that bed more
than one night, and that within sight of the house,
and directly along our beaten path to the woods.
Fifty times, at least, the dog had passed this
shock of corn, had run round it, had sniffed at it,
doubtless, and gone on, while that 'possum slept
peacefully inside.

86 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

But how did the 'possum manage it, right along
the path and so near the house, where, except for
this accident to his shock, he might have lived
all winter ! In this way, partly. This corn-shock
that he had chosen, unlike any other in the field,

He climbed out on the slanting stake

stood close along an old worm-fence, and in such
a position that one of the long cross-stakes, used
for a post, slanted out over its top.

Now, if this 'possum had been a rabbit this
long, slanting fence stake would not have helped
him at all. A rabbit cannot walk the top rail of a
fence, and climb out to the tip of a tall, slanting
pole. But a 'possum can. A rabbit would have
to creep under the shock from the bottom, going
in on the ground. The 'possum, however, did not
have to do that way. He walked the rider of the

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL 87

fence, climbed out on the slanting stake, dropped
to the top of the shock, and went straight down
through the middle to his nest.

He came out the way he went in, too, never
leaving his track on the ground near the corn-
shock, nor his scent near by where a dog could
find it. He may not have known that dogs cannot
walk fences and climb poles. Perhaps not. But
he knew two things, stupid as he looked: one was
that a good and sure road home lay atop the rail
fence ; the other was that a pretty safe way to
hang out one 's latch-string is through one 's chim-
ney.

Yet perhaps this was only a happy blunder, and
not real woods-wisdom at all. For it is hard to
believe in the cunning of so much fat. One is not
surprised at a coon's taking the safe road of the
top rail; but that a sleepy, logy, fat, old 'possum
should take so much care is a real surprise.

I am inclined to think it was a blunder. I think
he happened to walk the fence, happened to climb
the stake, and happened to tumble off into a soft
spot. And if once, why not again! For let a
notion get into a 'possum's head, and there it will
stick. You can't get it out, nor get another no-
tion in; there isn't room, I suppose.

88 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Take the case of "Pinky," a little 'possum we
once possessed, who had a notion that he wanted
to be domesticated — wanted to be a tame 'possum.

Most wild animals stoutly resist all of our well-
intentioned efforts to bring them up in dooryard
ways, and take to the woods again at the first
opportunity. I have tried one wild animal after
another, but every one of them sooner or later
escaped to the wilds — every one but Pinky. Pinky
refused to stay in the woods when taken back
there, because, forsooth, into the little think-hole
in his head had got stuck the notion that he
wanted to be a tame 'possum, and that notion
could not be budged. He was going to be a tame
'possum whether anybody wanted him to be or
not.

Pinky was one of a family of nine young 'pos-
sums that I caught several springs ago and car-
ried home. In the course of a few weeks eight
of them were adopted by my boy friends; but
Pinky, because he was the runt, and looked very
sorry and forlorn, was not chosen. He was left
with me. I kept him and fed him milk, — his
mother had choked to death on a fish-bone, — until
he caught up to the size of the biggest mother-fed
'possum of his age in the woods. Then I took him

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL 89

down to the old stump in the brier-patch where he
was born, and left him to shift for himself.

Being thrown into a brier-patch, you remember,
was exactly what tickled Br'er Babbit half to
death ; and any one would have supposed that be-
ing put gently down in the middle of his home
brier-patch would have tickled a little 'possum
even more.

No, not this 'possum. Not Pinky. I went
home and forgot him. But the next morning,
when breakfast was preparing, whom should we
see but Pinky, curled up in the feather cushion of
the kitchen settee, sound asleep!

I could hardly believe my eyes.

He had found his way back during the night;
had climbed in through the trough of the pump-

pinky

90 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

box into the kitchen, and had gone to sleep like
the rest of the family. He gaped and grinned
and looked about him when awakened, altogether
at home, and really surprised that morning had
come so soon. He got down and took his saucer
of milk under the stove as if nothing unusual had
happened.

We had had a good many 'possums, crows, liz-
ards, and the like; so, in spite of this winsome
show of confidence and affection, Pinky was borne
away once more to the briers.

That night he did not creep in by the pump-box
trough. Nothing was seen of him in the morning
and he passed quickly out of our minds. But he
still kept his notion. Two or three days after
this, as I was crossing the back yard, I stopped
to pick up a large calabash-gourd that I had left
on the woodpile. I had cut a round hole in the
gourd somewhat larger than a silver dollar, in-
tending to fasten the thing up for the bluebirds
to nest in.

It ought to have been as light as so much air,
almost, but instead it was heavy — the children
had filled it with sand, I thought. I turned it over
and looked into the hole, and lo! not sand, but
Pinky!

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL 91

Yes, there inside that gourd was Pinky, sound
asleep, as usual. He wanted to be a tame 'pos-
sum, and he was going to be a tame 'possum, or
know the reason why.

The notion had brought him back again. How
he ever managed to squeeze through the opening
of the gourd, I don't know; but there he was
sweetly sleeping.

He no longer possessed the notion; the notion
possessed him. And what happened finally? A
sad thing, of course. A creature with such a head
on his shoulders could not come to a fine and
happy end.

I took Pinky back to the woods the third time,
and the third time he returned, but blundered into
a neighbor's yard, and — and a little later he was
drawn up in a bucket of water from the bottom
of that neighbor's well, still asleep, only — they
could not wake him up — poor little Pinky !

Would Pinky ever have had wit enough, I
wonder, to choose the fence-rail road and the
chimney-top entrance? Yet the old fellow of the
corn-shock that .Uncle Jethro had for Thanksgiv-
ing is not the only 'possum I have known to take
a roundabout way home for the sake of hiding his
trail. One autumn I was fooled over and over, —

92 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

we were fooled, the dog and I, — until snow fell,
and the whole trick was written out in signs that
our stumbling wits could understand.

Around the rim of the steep wooded hillsides
circling Lupton's Pond runs a rail fence, along
which grow a number of old chestnut-oak trees
with clusters of great stems from single spread-
ing stumps that are particularly gone to holes.

Ordinarily, if I wanted a 'possum, about all I
had to do was to climb the hill, prod around in the
holes until I felt something soft that hissed, then
reach in and pull the 'possum out.

This particular autumn the 'possums had all
been pulled out, it seemed. One day five came forth
from a single stump, which seemed to exhaust the
hillside's crop for the season, so that I quite
ceased looking into the stumps for more.

Several times the dog had started a trail in
the woods at the head of the pond. He had gone
up the hill to the rim, and halted, beating about,
but was always fooled. What was it? At first I
took it to be a coon ; for there is no other creature
in our woods so thoughtful of his steps. And a
coon whose range is infested with dogs grows to
be astonishingly careful and cunning.

This must be an old coon, said I. Now an old

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL 93

coon in such a country as Lupton's Pond will never
go straight home, nor take a beaten path. Out on
the boundaries of his range he trots along with-
out minding how he steps. The dogs may have
fun with his trail there. He intends only that
they shall not follow him clear home, that they
shall not find his home-tree, nor even the vicinity
of it.

So, as he enters his own home swamp his move-
ments change. The dogs may be hard after him
or not. If not close behind, he knows by long ex-
perience that they may be expected soon, and
never so far forgets his precious skin as to leave
a clue pointing directly toward home.

Instead lie trots along some boundary fence, or
right up the middle of a swamp stream, leaping
over all the crossing logs, and coming out, likely,
on the bank, which is on the side of the stream
away from the nest-tree. Farther down he jumps
back over the stream, runs hard toward a big gum
tree, and from a dozen feet away takes a flying
leap, catching the trunk up just out of reach of the
keen-nosed dogs. On up he goes a little and leaps
again, touching the ground ten feet out, thus leav-
ing a gap, a blank, of twenty or more feet in his
trail.

94 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Stream and fence and tree have puzzled the
dogs. But they still hold on and finally pick up
the scent beyond the gum, only to run instantly
into a greater blank in the trail. The coon has
taken to another tree ; up and out on the limbs of
this to still another, and on, like a squirrel, from
tree to tree for perhaps a hundred yards, un-
til he comes to his own high hollow.

It was such a broken trail that I thought my
dog must be following at Lupton's Pond. She
could get no farther than the top of the slope.
Over the fence, under the fence, and out far and
wide she would go, but never a sniff of the lost
scent.

Then came a light snow, and on the white page
of the hillside in his own handwriting was the
story of a large 'possum, who had been along the
stream at the head of the pond, had gone up
the hill to a fallen pine, out along this pine by way
of the thick top to the fence-post, and on along the
top rails.

The writing was plain in the sticky snow, and
so was the mystery of the broken trail. I hurried
along the fence and saw ahead that a sagging post
leaned in against one of the large chestnut-oaks.
I knew that my 'possum was in that tree.

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL 95

Sure enough, the snow was brushed from the
post, there were signs of feet on the tree trunk,
and down between the twin boles was the hole,
smooth, clean, and 'possumy. The crafty old fel-
low had squeezed hard to get in and had left a
hair or two on the rim of his entrance.

He was tremendously fat and tremendously
sound asleep when I pulled him out. But for all
his fat and sleepiness, he had been cunning
enough to fool us for many a night with his fence-
and tree-trunk trail.

THE DANCE IN THE ALDEE SWALE

CHAPTER IX

THE DANCE IN THE ALDER SWALE

EARLY dusk of a cold March night was fall-
ing. The two red maple trees in the little
alder swale beyond the pasture bars stood pen-
ciled on the gray sky. A robin had been sing-
ing, but now the deep winter hush had crept back
over the gray fields.

Suddenly there was a hiss and a swift winnow
of wings close above my head. I dodged. Past
me, lined for the swale, with a quick, twisting
flight as if fired from a rifle, sped a bird.

"He's back!" I exclaimed. "He escaped!"
And through my cold, rain-soaked world of wood
and field and alder swale shot a new, wild thrill

100 BEYOND THE PASTUEE BAKS

of life. It was a woodcock that had nested for
several seasons along a slender, alder-hidden
stream about half a mile from my home.

I was not expecting him to come back this
spring. When the gunning season had opened
in July, at least a score of men knew that a single
pair of woodcocks had nested along the stream;
and up and down, over and over, one after an-
other those men beat the swale, beat it by clump,
by tussock, by square foot for the birds, and killed
five. Four of these were the young of that sum-
mer ; the fifth bird was one of the parents.

The swale turned brown that autumn, and soon
lay silent and bleak. I could not pass it during
the winter without a feeling of anger. It was a
narrow strip of swampy ground, barely fifty feet
across at its widest part, and bordered by a
wooded hillside and by wide, tilled fields. But
it was all the swamp, all the meadow that I had.
And that this should be robbed of its life, that all
my out-of-doors within walking distance of home
should never again hold a woodcock's nest, was
more than a grief. It made me angry.

I had been robbed. Twenty men against six
woodcocks ! And they had been eager to kill the
last pair breeding in this last shrinking covert,

THE DANCE IN THE ALDER SWALE 101

and thus destroy the race of woodcocks here for-
ever.

The gunners had been eager — but one of the
birds, by some miracle, had escaped. And there
he went humming through the cold March dusk,
and all my world seemed changed.

He would induce some young, unmated female
woodcock on her way north to remain with him,
I hoped, and there would yet be a woodcock home
in the swale.

At first I feared lest this one might be a female
and might be lured away. Then I feared that
this one might be a migrant himself, who would
halt only to feed that night and go on. But the
next day I found him along the stream, and I knew
by the way he got to cover that he was on familiar
ground and meant to stay.

What a queer, comical-looking bird he is! If
nature ever had any feeble-minded offspring, you
would surely put Woodcock down for one. But he
has his full share of good bird sense. He only
looks foolish. The trouble with his looks is partly
due to his nocturnal habits. Night does not seem
the birds' natural wake-time, and those that turn
it into day seem to take on some peculiar appear-
ance— tlie owl his ridiculous show of wisdom, and

102 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

the woodcock his feeble-minded, foolish expres-
sion.

Yet it is neither foolishness with the woodcock
nor wisdom with the owl, but merely beaks and
eyes. With eyes to the front and a beak made for
spectacles, the owl looks very wise indeed. The
woodcock's eyes are at the rear and in the top of
his head. If he wore glasses, they might rest on
the back of his neck! And how would anybody
look with spectacles upon the back of his neck ?

This position for the bird's eyes, however, is
a convenient one. He really needs to see out of
the top of his head a part of the time. His food
is largely angleworms. In order that he may
catch these, nature provides him a three-inch
probe for a bill. Then, for his safety and com-
fort when sounding with his probe in the mud for
worms, nature puts his eyes up on the top of his
head, just as a clam-digger rolls up his sleeves in
order to keep them out of the mud. Only the
woodcock's eyes have to stay up on the back of his
head all the time, whereas the clam-digger can
roll his sleeves down.

In the bare, damp spots among the alders and
along the edge of the corn-field, soon after Wood-
cock arrived, I found his borings — groups of a

THE DANCE IN THE ALDER SWALE 103

dozen or more holes where, in hunting worms, he
had plunged his bill into the earth up to his eyes
(up to the place where any other bird's eyes
would be).

I had always wondered how, when he felt a
worm, he could open his bill with it forced far
down in stiff mud, for surely he does not thrust it
down already open! Year after year I kept on
wondering instead of trying to find out, until one
day some one showed me that there was a curious
flexible tip to the upper mandible which the bird
could move independently of the rest of the beak,
and thus could grasp the luckless worm, though
deep in the mud.

We ought not to expect of a bird with such a
beak anything like a song. How could a bird with
a hooked beak or a flat beak or a long hinged beak
sing I It is not for his singing that I should miss
Woodcock in the swale, but for his dancing. No
dance fires among the Indians' tepees, no bar-
becue among the colored people's cabins, no folk
dance the world over was ever wilder or more
frenzied than the dance of the woodcock among
the alders, night after night in the early spring.

I said that Woodcock does not sing. He does
harp, however, his own accompaniment — a weird

104 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

wing music, that sets you dancing, too, as no other
bird music you ever heard.

It is dusk in the swale. I am sitting on the
root of one of the red maples, now in misty gar-
net bloom, for it is May. A wavering line of
piping hylas (the little tree frogs) marks the
course of the stream. Scattered bird-calls come
from the covert, and out of the deepening blue
overhead falls a flock of notes, the chinks of mi-
grant birds winging north.

Presently, in the grassy level across the stream,
sounds a clear peent! peent! peent! I listen, half
rising. Peent! peent! peent! slow and regular;
then, bursting from cover with the rush of a sky
rocket, spins the woodcock. Out against the gray
horizon he sweeps, and round on the first turn of
his soaring spiral. The hum of his wings fills the
swale. Round and round, swifter and swifter,
the hum rising shrill as he mounts two hundred —
three hundred — four hundred feet into the dusky
sky, and hangs — hangs a whirling blur in the blue,
and drops — headlong, with a pitching, zigzag
flight that has the velocity of a bullet, and whis-
tling, as he falls, a low, pearly thrill of love that
is smothered in the whir-r-r-r of his alighting
wings.

THE DANCE IN THE ALDER SWALE 105

It is all over, and I am standing, holding my
breath at the strange performance. Then there
sounds again that preparatory peent! pee,nt! and
I await the second burst : the looping spiral flight
upward, the swift drop, and the clear, low whistle
of love. And so the dance goes on as the dark-
ness thickens, until only a winnow of wings whirls
shrill toward the stars, and a sweet, pearly whistle
ripples down through the gloom.

While waiting here in the twilight I see the last
year's nest of a wood-thrush in the leafless top of
a slender sapling. I have not heard Woodthrush
yet this spring. What if he should not return to
the strip of alder-bottom? Happily there is no
immediate danger. Yet I should miss the wild
love-dance of my woodcock almost as much as I
should the serene love-song of the thrush. I
should miss the woodcock himself even more. He
is so sly at hiding, and so unexpected when he
jumps up. There is a thrill in his break from
cover like the thrill one feels in the strike and
whirl of a trout. One jumps almost out of one's
shoes. Fifty thrushes would fifty times sweeten
the swale; my single pair of woodcocks would
keep it all wild and untamed.

But they are going — gone already from the

Woodthrush

THE DANCE IN THE ALDER SWALE 107

swale. The woodcock soon will be among the ex-
tinct birds. Like all birds, the woodcocks have
many natural enemies ; they are one of their own
worst enemies in building so early that snows and
frosts destroy the eggs, and in places where April
freshets sweep them away. Yet in spite of all
this, they would flourish were it not for the pot-
hunter. They might be hunted during the weeks
of the fall migration, as some states allow, and
still flourish, but not in July, before the young are
on the wing, as a few states still allow.

From everywhere over their wide range, be-
tween the Atlantic coast and the line of the Mis-
sissippi River, the woodcocks are disappearing.
Once gone, they can never be restored, largely be-
cause of their peculiar food, which makes them
migratory, and which cannot be supplied them as
grain can be supplied to the quail and to other
game birds. The dangers of their migrations,
and those which beset their nesting-places, the
fewness of their eggs, their limited and easily
hunted haunts, are causes which are making rap-
idly toward the extinction of the woodcocks.

Already these noble birds have gone from my
little alder swale. There has been no love-dance
over the alders since those of my woodcock many

108 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

springs ago. The trees have been swept from the
hillside, the little stream has shrunken, and rush
and sedge are now cropped close by the cattle.
But the birds were not driven away. They were
shot! Has the new Federal law protecting mi-
gratory birds in all the states come soon enough
to save Woodcock, I wonder!

CHICKAREE THE SCOLD

CHAPTER X

CHICKAREE THE SCOLD

(~^\HICKAREE, the red squirrel, lives in every
VV patch of woods all over the United States.
Out in the Rocky Mountains he goes by another
name, and he has a little darker color, but out
there he has the same curiosity, the same saucy,
blustery way of scolding you. You can change
your name and change your coat, but you cannot
so easily change yourself. Neither can chickaree.
You know him — if you know any of the wild
people of the woods. Wild people, did I say?
Why, chickaree is anything but wild. He will not
let you pull his tail ; but he will sit up on a limb
over your head and make faces at you, jabber at
you, jerk his own tail, and leaning over toward
111

112 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

you, tell you with all his peppery might to go
straight back home, for your mother wants you.

Oh, he is the smallest whirlwind, the tiniest tem-
pest, the biggest little somebody in all the knot-
holes of the woods. He spills over with loud talk
and conceit. But I like him, for all of that. And
he likes me. He is interested in me every time
he sees me. A gossiping gadabout, a busybody,
a tiresome little scold, a robber of birds' nests (so
I am told), a fighter, a nuisance (when he makes
a nest in my cellar, as he did last winter), a thief,
a — what shall I say more? Just this: that, in
spite of all his faults, I like chickaree, and I don 't
want him put in jail or hanged — not unless he
really does eat young birds and suck eggs.

They say he does. Did you ever see him! Now
I have seen old birds flying at him as if afraid he
might come near their nests, or as if he had robbed
them before; but here are six or ten red squir-
rels in my yard and I have never caught one kill-
ing young birds. You must watch him yourself;
and when you see him do it (not hear him, nor
hear about him), — when you see him robbing a
nest make him into pot-pie right off, then write
me a letter telling me all about what you saw
him do.

CHICKAREE THE SCOLD 113

But ' ' I would n 't put it past him, " as my Penn-
sylvania friends say. For he is such a fierce lit-
tle monster and so greedy too !

Descending Mount Washington by way of the
carriage-road, one day we stopped at a little stone
bridge to eat our lunch, when chickaree came forth
and ordered us on. He immediately smelled the
lunch, however, and grew silent, creeping up
within arm's-reach of us, watching how we ate.
He showed no sign of fear, only curiosity, then
wonder, then deep hunger. The smell of molasses
cookies and Summit House rolls was new to him,
new and gnawing. It made him hungry, so madly
hungry that, when I turned and threw the lunch-
box into the dry bed of the stream, he was into
that box almost as soon as it landed.

His first bite was of bread and butter. With-
out pausing to chew it, he seized the slice, scurried
off down a log, and disappeared in the forest.
"Where is he taking it!" we asked. Not far
away, for suddenly he popped over a rock, gave
us a quick glance, and jumped back into the box
again.

There were several cookies left in the box, to-
gether with some slices of bread, and nearly half
a loaf of bread uncut.

114 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Chickaree snatched another slice, ran down the
bed of the stream, over a log, and out of sight.
Then I saw a gleam of white bread in the dark,
thick woods. I could not see chickaree, but I
could follow him by the gleaming white slice —
flash-flash-flash-round-and-round-and round, up a
tall spruce tree, till I lost it in the tall top.

We were wondering if he would come back for
another slice when, pop! he landed right in the
middle of that box. .

This time he got hold of the uncut half -loaf.

"Whew!" said he, "but this is the biggest
chestnut I ever saw! Quick, or some other fel-
low may see it ! It would kill me to share all of
this great-big-little nut with anybody!" And he
pitched upon it as if to gulp it down at a bite.

Of course he could not swallow it. Indeed, he
did not mean to then and there. He meant to
hide it! The greedy little pig!

Tilting the loaf up, he fixed his long teeth into
the top crust, and by dint of backing and pulling
got out of the gully and landed the loaf upon the
top of a flat rock. Unable to raise his load clear,
he got behind it to push. It was slow, hard work.
Becoming more and more anxious, he forgot that
he was on the top of a tall rock, and that

CHICKAREE THE SCOLD 115

the rock, in the direction he was going, ended ab-
ruptly.

On he pushed across the rough, mossy surface,
inch by inch, until, catching a good foothold, he
gave a mighty shove and over they went, he and
his loaf together, striking with a beautiful splash
in a little pool of water below!

We took a bit of wicked pleasure in his fall, as
we saw how he scrambled out unhurt. He came
out, however, still holding to his loaf. But it was
thoroughly soaked now; and as he dragged it up
on shore the top crust came off, letting the loaf
tumble back into the water. He ran away to hide
the crust, then came back quickly to the pool.

It was fun to see him fish for that soaked piece
of bread. What was the matter with it? He
would catch it in his paws, take it in his mouth,
scoop and pull and root, but each time he would
get only crumbs. The provoking stuff had got
bewitched ! It would not come out. He could not
get it out !

But Chickaree was not bewitched. He was an-
gry— plain old- Adam anger. Up on the log he
jumped, flipped his tail, clawed the bark, and, with
a burst of wrath, gave the whole big mountain a
furious scolding. It was the mountain's fault,

116 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

he railed. After one terrible minute he came
back to us, coughing and husky and sore in his
throat.

When he reached the box, how quickly his spirit
changed! No April sky ever broke more sud-
denly into rainy sunshine than Chickaree on pick-
ing up one of the molasses cookies. He was sur-
prised and delighted. Never had he tasted cook-
ies before! Birch catkins and beechnuts! They
were flat! Even the tender terminal buds of the
pine would be tasteless now. And stale acorns!
Dreadful !

All this we saw in his countenance as he took
the first mouthful and bolted with the cooky. He
bolted, but he stopped short for another bite.
Then on he went, only to stop short for a third
bite ; started again, but came to a dead stop on the
end of the log, and finished the cooky then and
there.

I now went after him to see if I could find where
he had hidden the bread. As I stepped upon the
log, he turned and came down it toward me.

He drew near ; walked over my foot and smelled
of me. Cookies! Where? He sniffed and
sniffed; then catching the odor of the cookies on
the hand hanging at my side, he stood up to get a

CHICKAREE THE SCOLD 117

bite, when the foolish hand twitched. That was
enough. The hand had moved. He would not ap-
proach that hand again.

I went on in and found the two slices, but not
the crust. One of the slices was high up in the
top of a spruce, the other in some moss behind a
stump.

Perhaps these were temporary hiding-places,
chosen hurriedly, from which, later on, he would
collect his bread to store in some secret hollow for
the winter. I am not certain, however, that
Chickaree has a barn or any winter storehouse.
I have often found pignuts stored in old tree-
hollows. Still they were always shells only, as if
Chickaree had simply taken and eaten them there.

Yet, more than once I have caught Chickaree
stuffing hollow rails with corn. Perhaps he in-
tended to keep these stores against the winter. I
suspect from what I know of Chickaree, that it
was more mischief and itching for occupation than
thought for his coming needs.

He never finished the stuffing. Long before the
cavities were full the little scatterbrain would be
off at some other active but useless task, leaving
his stores to be found and devoured by the jays or
the mice. Chickaree will never remember that the

118 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

second rail from the bottom, in the section between
the stump and the sassafras-tree, holds a pint of
golden corn.

All wild animals are mere children. They all
love to put things into holes. They all must be
busy — if with nothing else than their tails. But
they rarely work.

I knew a chickaree, who lived in a little glen by
the side of Thorn Mountain Cabin in the White
Mountains, and who began in August, two months
before the end of the harvest, to pick and store
green birch catkins. You cannot store them when
they are dead ripe, perhaps, for they may fall to
pieces. As I watched him, however, I concluded
he was doing the work just for the fun of it. He
must do something; and this tree, full of little
cones, looked to him just as a box of buttons looks
to a baby.

He owned this great single birch at the head
of the glen. He lived in it alone, and made war
against all birds or beasts that came near.

I have seen him chase a junco up and down and
across the top until the bird flew off. A flock of
them settling among the branches drove him fran-
tic. I, too, when I came near called down his
wrath. But after a week of daily visits I was al-

CHICKAREE THE SCOLD 119

lowed to stretch out upon the moss beneath the
low, wide limbs and watch him store.

His morning task was to store about a pint of
catkins from this yellow birch in a secret crib
among the ferns of the glen. Up and down the
tree he would race, a round trip every three min-
utes, loaded with a single catkin each time down.
After storing about thirty he would take one to
a certain bottom limb, and here, close up against
the leaning tree trunk, safely hidden from over-
head enemies, he would begin breakfast, scatter-
ing the winged seeds down in a thin, flaky shower
upon me underneath as he ate the catkin. He
always ate squatting close upon this same limb
and backed hard up against the trunk. The
ground below was snowed under with the scales
which had fallen as he husked the seeds.

The red squirrels' beds are big, bulky nests,
built mostly of cedar bark, stripped fine and mat-
ted into an irregular mass the size of a hat. The
doorways open from the bottoms or sides, leav-
ing the roofs without a crack and perfectly water-
proof.

Sometimes an abandoned crow's nest is taken
for the foundation. In this old nest a deep, soft
bed of newly shredded bark is made, and a thatch

120 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

of the same material laid on above. Such a nest
will not rock and sway when the winds are high,
as the gray squirrel's often will; for the crows
do not build out in the tips of the branches, but
close up to the trunks. It is a warm, safe nest
in the coldest of winter storms.

Chickaree is a good climber, running the tree-
tops, scampering along their dizzy roads almost
as fast as one can run on the ground beneath. It
makes me hold my breath to see him skip along
a slender limb, jump to a second, race out to its
tip, and leap — clearing fifteen feet — to catch the
very ends of another limb swaying fifty feet above
in the air.

But the thing he can do best of all is scold!
Let me go out on the hillside here, and one of the
little wretches will climb a tree and warn me to
go back to the house. He is instantly joined by
several others, and together overhead they follow
me, disputing every step with me, swaggering,
growling, and pouring forth a torrent of threat
and abuse until they are wheezy and out of breath.

It is bluster, most of it; they love to make a
noise. If I drop down at the foot of a low-limbed
pine, they gather round, for a look at me, close to.
Once I remember that a chipmunk joined them.

He would take one
to a certain bot-
tom limb

122 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Then came an inquisitive little chickadee, behind
whom one of the squirrels, now only a bundle of
curiosity, crept down within reach of me, flattened
himself to the trunk, and began to talk to himself
about me in little broken snorts, sniffs, coughs, and
snickers, punctuating every snicker and cough and
sniff and snort with quick, short jerks of his tail.
What did he say about me I Making fun of me,
perhaps, because I could not climb trees and bite
off pine-buds. I don 't know. But I do know this,
that, whatever he said, I enjoyed having him near
me, for I am sure that he half enjoyed my being
near him. And I like the hillside better for hi's
sake. It would often be dull and silent if he were
gone, for he is a sociable little scamp, if he is a big
scold.

A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY

CHAPTER XI

A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY

WHEN I was a boy, well started in my
"teens," I made the acquaintance of an
old naturalist, John W. P. Jenks, who taught me
a most interesting and most valuable lesson in
natural history. I think you ought to have the
lesson too, though it may be that you do not need
it so much as I did.

The old naturalist, who was also a college pro-
fessor, had given to the Institute, where I was
going to school, a very large collection of mounted
birds, shells, snakes — in short, a whole natural
history museum. Now, it happened that I knew
a little bit about birds, and how to mount them,
so I was put to work naming them, and setting

125

126 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

them up in the glass show-cases of the Institute
museum.

It was while I was doing this that the old nat-
uralist came to visit the Institute in order to see
how we were treating his birds and beasts.

I was greatly excited. I had read about great
naturalists — Linnaeus, and Gilbert White, Pro-
fessor Agassiz, John James Audubon, Thoreau,
and old Tom Edwards — but I had never seen one
alive, much more, spoken with one. Great nat-
uralists did not often come to southern New Jer-
sey. Yet here was one under the same roof with
me, and who would be coming in at the museum
door any moment. I could hardly work for ex-
citement.

For I had been told all about him, how he was
the friend of Agassiz, how he had hunted birds
and snakes all over the world, how he had been
bitten by centipeds, and poisoned with the arsenic
used in curing skins, how he had been the first
white man to explore Lake Okechobee in Florida,
and, most wonderful of all, how he had written
a book ! Yes, and I had a copy of that book and
had read it through and through.

Of course I was excited, and happy, and,
though I did not dare say it to myself, I felt also

A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY 127

very important. And you would have felt so too,
if naturalists had always been the most interest-
ing men in the world to you. Why, I had read the
life of John James Audubon until I knew it
by heart. There was a picture of Audubon in the
"Life" I read that showed him with long hair to
his shoulders, and a rolling shirt collar wide open
at the throat, that seemed to me very fitting.
So I asked mother to cut my shirt collars low —
just like his ; and I tried to let my hair grow long
— just like his. Mother did very well with the
collars; but I got on terribly with the hair; for
it grew up, not down, and looked about as curly
as a load of hay.

But I was a small boy in those days of collars
and hair. I was fully three years older the morn-
ing when Professor Jenks, the naturalist, came
into the Institute museum, with a strange, quick
scuff and shuffle (due to paralysis caused by the
arsenic used in curing the skins!) and shook me
by the hand. If anything had been lacking in the
great man it would have been made more than
good by that shuffle — arsenic in his very bones !

He was a short, stout man, past seventy, with
snow-white hair and beard, a keen, kindly face
that made one think of Christmas, with a quick-

128 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

ness and energy to all his movements (including
his shuffle) that seemed to set everything about
him in motion.

Up and down among the glass cases we went,
his voice full of the pleasure he felt at seeing his
work once more established, his suggestions
falling thick and fast as we passed from group to
group, until, turning upon me suddenly, he said:

4 'Go out and get a bird. I must give you a les-
son in mounting."

Yes, things like this have happened often
enough in books, but when before did a boy away
down in the woods of southern New Jersey have
the great man of his dreams appear suddenly
before him, and coming instantly to his heart's
one deep desire, send him out to get a bird for a
lesson in mounting?

Strange things happen to boys and girls in
books, I say. You have read about them. But do
you know, stranger things than the things of books
keep happening all the time to boys and girls out-
side of books, to boys and girls in the country,
away in the heart of the woods ; and to boys and
girls in the city, away in the heart of the slums?
This was surely a very strange thing to happen
to me.

A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY 129

I hurried out into the grove for the bird, and
was gone about fifteen minutes, when I returned,
bringing a yellow-billed cuckoo. As I laid it be-
fore the old naturalist I ventured to say that it
was the only bad bird I knew, except the cow-bird
and the English sparrow.

The face of the old naturalist darkened with
disapproval at sight of the bird and still more at
my words.

"No! no!" he replied. "That's one of the
most useful birds we have. You should have
brought an English sparrow.

"Notice now when I open the gizzard how this
bird has befriended you. His gizzard will be
lined — will be stuck full of caterpillar hairs, as
full as a piece of plush with pile. ' '

And while he had been speaking the delicate
skin had been removed without a drop of blood or
a broken feather ! And there before my wonder-
ing eyes was the gizzard, turned inside out, and
stuck as full of caterpillar hairs as the caterpillar
himself !

A "bad" bird? No, rather, as the old natural-
ist said, it is one of the most useful birds we have.
It eats the hairy caterpillars that most other
birds refuse ; and in June when the canker worms

130 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

begin to infest the fruit trees the cuckoo comes
into the orchard as if sent to save the fruit
crop.

Watch him, how quietly and thoroughly he
does his work. Well hidden among the branches,
he cocks his head under this bunch of leaves, then
under that; peeks here, then there, and when he
sees the worm flutters up and picks it off, then

He eats caterpillars

lights upon another branch for another search,
and so on until he has gone all over and cleaned
up the tree.

He is a most useful bird, and also a most inter-
esting bird, and one that you can easily learn to
know. He is very slender — the slenderest of our

A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY 131

birds. When you see a drab or dark brownish
bird, a little longer than the robin, and very slen-
der for his length, put him down for a cuckoo.
If his tail seems the longest part of him and
seems likely to fall off as he flies; and if he flies
with a loose, dangling, dawdling flight from tree
to tree; and if he calls kow, kow, kow, kow-kow-
kow, rapidly and loudly, then it is surely a cuckoo.
The only bird that you might confuse him with
on the wing is the brown thrasher; but the
thrasher is a lighter brown, with a rounded, spot-
ted breast, and flies with a sure, strong flight;
whereas the cuckoo flutters and wavers uncer-
tainly along like some huge moth.

And if you find his nest you will know that, too,
from any other bird's, because it is the flimsiest
criss-cross of sticks that you will ever see with
blue eggs in it. The turtle dove's nest is a poor
shift also, hardly fit to be called a nest, but it is
better than the cuckoo's; besides it has two white
eggs in it, not blue.

Some of the birds, the whippoorwill, the murre,
and others lay their eggs on the bare ground or
on the rocks, as the case may be, without a nest.
The cuckoo, however, is a tree bird, and needs a
nest, but builds the poorest nest I know. Still

132 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

this is better than the mean shift of the English
cuckoo; for this cousin cuckoo of England not
only builds no nest, but slips around and when
nobody is looking, leaves its eggs in other birds'
nests, and goes off care-free! It will do still
worse : it will eat the eggs of the other bird ; leave
its own egg in the empty nest, and thus fool the
foster mother, after robbing her, into hatching
out and feeding a child that does not belong to
her.

Our own cuckoo is not so bad as that, although
his lazy nest looks as if he would like to be, or in-
deed, might be, if he did keep watch on his lazy,
makeshift habits. And it is said, by those who
may know, too, that our cuckoo steals other birds'
eggs, and sometimes lays its own eggs in robins'
and catbirds' nests.

Now our cow-bird (one of the blackbird family)
does that, but I have never found our cuckoo at it.
He may, sometimes ; still I have never seen him ;
whereas I have often found him with his own nest
and eggs — very strong evidence in his favor. We
are all quick to see evil, and to remember ill. A
bad name is hard to bury. I think our cuckoo suf-
fers for the evil done by his cousin over seas ; for
surely it was of this foreign cuckoo that I was

A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY 133

thinking when I shot the cuckoo Tor the old nat-
uralist and called it a "bad" bird.

It is not a bad bird, but a good and useful and
interesting, and, somehow, to me, a very mysteri-
ous bird. It is not a singer, yet I love to listen to
its notes — its tut-tut, tut-tut, tut-tut, tut-tut,
cl-uck-cl-uck, kow, kow, kow, kotv! For loud as
they are, they are strangely soft, floating notes
that come from nowhere in particular. They
seem to dangle and dawdle and wave and flutter
through the air, just as the bird himself seems to
on the wing. He is not the bird of early spring, as
the English cuckoo is, so we do not write verses to
him as the poets of England have done for hun-
dreds of years. Our cuckoo is the bird of mid-
summer, and his soft, spirit-like kow, kow, koiv,
sounding out on the hot, close days of July and
August says rain, rain, rain! And so he is called
the ''rain-crow."

I have never known him to bring the rain with
his call, as the tree-toad seems to bring it with
his quavering voice. But I have known him to
eat worms ; and I did see the gizzard of the one I
shot stuck full of caterpillar hairs ; and I do know
now that he is not a "bad" bird. And one thing
more I know (I learned it that day in the lesson

134 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

with the old naturalist) — and it is this: the best
way to learn about cuckoos is to watch them with
your own eyes and listen to them with your own
ears and to beware of hearsay.

CALICO AND THE KITTENS

CHAPTER XII

CALICO AND THE KITTENS

ONE spring day I found myself the sole help
of two blind, naked infants — as near a real
predicament as a man could well get. What did
it matter that they had fur and long tails and
paws? They were infants just the same; and
any kind of an infant on the hands of a man is
dreadful.

As I looked at the two little things in the
grass, a feeling of helplessness quite overcame
me. The way those baby squirrels squirmed and
shivered and squeaked somehow made me squirm
and shiver down to my very knees. I felt sick
and foolish, for what was I to do with them!
One thing I could not do, and that was kill them.

137

138 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Both of their parents were dead. Their loose
leaf-nest up in the white oak tree had been rid-
dled with shot. I had climbed up and found
them; I had brought them down; I must— feed
them !

But how could I feed them? Nipples, quills,
spoons — none of them would fit these mites of
mouths. What a miserable mother I was ! How
poorly equipped my woodshed for foundlings!
They were dying for lack of food; and as they
pawed about and whimpered in my hands I de-
voutly wished the shot had mercifully ended their
little lives too. And I must say that I was
tempted to put them out of their misery at once.

But I started homeward with them. As I could
see no other way I determined to rear those squir-
rels, if it could be done. As I went along I re-
membered— and it came to me with a shock — that
one of my neighbor's cats had a new batch of kit-
tens. They were only a few days old. Might not
Calico, their mother, be induced to adopt the
squirrels ?

Nothing could be more absurd. The kittens
were three times larger than the squirrels. Even
had they been the same size, did I think the old
three-colored cat could be fooled? that she might

CALICO AND THE KITTENS 139

not know a kitten of hers from some other moth-
er's— 'squirrel? I was desperate indeed. Calico
was a hunter. She had eaten more gray squir-
rels, perhaps, than I had ever seen. She would
think I had been foraging for her — the mother
of seven green kittens! — and would take my
charges as titbits. Still I was determined to try.

My neighbor's kittens were enough and to
spare. One of Calico's last year's family still
waited a good home; and here were seven more
to be cared for. Might not two of these be spir-
ited away, far away; the two squirrels substi-
tuted, and the old cat be none the wiser?

I went home by way of my neighbor's, and
found Calico in the basement curled up asleep
with her babies. She roused and purred ques-
tioningly as we bent over the basket, and watched
with concern, but with no anxiety, as two of her
seven were lifted out and put inside a hat upon a
table. She was perfectly used to having her kit-
tens handled. True, strange things had hap-
pened to them. But that was long ago ; and there
had been so very many kittens ! How could any
one mother, and she only a cat mother, remember
about them all? She trusted us — with an ear
pricked and eyes watchful, however. But they

140 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

were safe inside the hat; and in a prideful, self-
conscious mother way she began to wash the five.
She had seen her kittens put into the hat, but now
some one stood between her and the hat when
the kittens were lifted out and the squirrels were
put in their place. Calico did not see what was
done. For a time she thought no more about the
two missing babies; she was busy washing and
showing the others. By and by it began to look as
though she had forgotten that there were more
than five. She could not count. But most moth-
ers can number their children, even if they can-
not count, and soon Calico began to fidget, look-
ing up at the hat, which the hungry, motherless
squirrels kept rocking. Then she leaped out upon
the floor, purring, and bounded upon the table,
going straight to the young squirrels.

There certainly was an expression of surprise
and mystification on her face as she saw the
change that had come over those kittens. They
had shrunk in size and faded from two or three
bright colors to a single pale pink! She looked
again and sniffed them. Their odor had changed,
too! She turned to the watchers about the table
as if asking them to explain it all, but they said
nothing. She hardly knew what to think. She

CALICO AND THE KITTENS 141

was half inclined to leave them and was turning
to go back to the basket, when one of the squirrels
whimpered — a genuine, universal baby whimper.
That settled it. She was a mother, and whatever
else these things in the hat might be, they were
babies. That was enough, especially as she
needed just this much baby here in the hat to make
good what was lacking in the basket.

With a soft, caressing purr she stepped gently
into the hat, took one of the squirrels by the neck,
brought it to the edge of the table, and laid it
down for a firmer hold ; then sprang lightly to the
floor. Over to the basket she walked and dropped
it tenderly among her other babies. Then, hav-
ing brought the remaining one and deposited that
with the same mother-care, she got into the bas-
ket herself and curled down contentedly — her
heart all whole.

And this is how strange a thing mother-love is !
The performance was scarcely believable. Could
she be so love-blind as not to see what they were
and that she could eat them! But when she be-
gan to lick the little interlopers with her tongue,
and cuddle them down to their dinner, as if they
were her own genuine kittens, there could be no
more fear of her eating them.

142 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

The squirrels do not know to this day that Cal-
ico is not their real mother. From the first they
took her mother's milk and mother's love as right-
fully and thanklessly as the kittens, growing, not
like the kittens at all, but into the most normal of
squirrels, round and fat and splendid-tailed.

Calico clearly recognized some difference be-
tween the two kinds of kittens, but what differ-
ence always puzzled her. She would clean up a
kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the
squirrels and wash it, but rarely, if ever, complet-
ing the work because of some strange un-catlike
antic. As the squirrels grew older they also grew
friskier, and soon took the washing as the signal
for a frolic. As well try to wash a bubble. They
were bundles of live springs, twisting out of her
paws, dancing over her back, leaping, kicking,
tumbling as she had never seen a kitten do in all
her richly kittened experience.

I don't know why, but Calico was certainly
fonder of these two freaks than of her own nor-
mal children. Long after the latter were weaned
she nursed and mothered the squirrels. I have
frequently seen them let into the kitchen when the
old cat was there, and the moment they got
through the door they would rush toward her,

CALICO AND THE KITTENS 143

dropping chestnuts or cookies by the way. She
in turn would hurry to meet them with a little
purr of greeting full of joy and affection. They
were shamefully big for such doings. The kittens
had quit it long ago. Calico herself, after a while,
came to feel the impropriety of nursing these two
strapping young things, and in a weak, indulgent
way tried to stop it. But the squirrels were per-
sistent and would not go about their business at
all with an ordinary cuff. She would put them
off, run away from them, slap them, and make be-
lieve to bite ; but not until she did bite, and sharply
too, would they be off. •'

All this seemed very strange and unnatural ; yet
a stranger thing happened one day, when Calico
brought in to her family a full-grown gray squirrel
which she had caught in the woods. She laid it
down on the floor and called the kittens and squir-
rels to gather around. They came, and as the
young squirrels sniffed at the dead one on the
floor there was hardly a mark of difference in
their appearance. It might have been one of Cali-
co's own nurslings that lay there dead, so far as
any one save Calico could see. And with her the
difference, I think, was more of smell than of
sight. But she knew her own; and though she

144 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

often found her two out among the trees of the
yard, she never was mistaken, nor for an instant
made as if to hurt them.

Yet they could not have been more entirely
squirrel had their own squirrel mother nurtured
them. Calico's milk and love went all to cat in
her own kittens, and all to squirrel in these that
she adopted. No single hair of theirs turned
from its squirrel-gray to any one of Calico's three
colors; no single squirrel trait became the least
bit catlike.

Indeed, as soon as the squirrels could run about
they forsook the clumsy-footed kittens under the
stove and scampered up back of the hot-water
tank, where they built a nest. Whenever Calico
entered the kitchen purring, out would pop their
heads, and down they would come, understanding
the mother language as well as the kittens, and
usually beating the kittens to the mother's side.

So far from teaching them to climb and build
nests behind water-tanks, their foster-mother
never got over her astonishment at it. All they
needed from her, all they needed and would have
received from their own squirrel mother, was
nourishment and protection until their teeth and
legs grew strong. Wits were born with them ; ex-

She often found her two out among the trees

146 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

perience was sure to come to them ; and with wits
and experience there is nothing known among
squirrels of their kind that these two would not
learn for themselves.

And there was not much known to squirrels that
these two did not know, apparently without even
learning. As they grew in size they increased ex-
ceedingly in naughtiness, and were banished
shortly from the kitchen to an ell or back wood-
shed. They celebrated this change in their for-
tunes by dropping some hickory nuts into a rubber
boot hanging on the wall, and then gnawing a hole
through the toe of the boot in order to extract the
hidden nuts. Was it mischief that led them to
gnaw through rather than go down the top! Or
did something get stuffed into the top of the boot
after the nuts were dropped in? And did the
squirrels remember that the nuts were in there, or
did they smell them through the rubber?

The squirrels took possession of the woodshed
for the winter. Their first nest had been built
behind the hot-water tank. They knew how to
build without any teaching. But knowing how is
not all there is to know about building; knowing
where is very important, and this they had to
learn.

CALICO AND THE KITTENS 147

Immediately on coming to the woodshed the
squirrels began their winter nest, a big, bulky,
newspaper affair, which they placed up in the
northwest corner of the shed directly under the
shingles. Here they slept till late in the fall.
This was the shaded side, and the most exposed
corner, of the whole house ; but all went well until
one night when the weather suddenly turned very
cold. A strong wind blew from the northwest
hard upon the squirrels' nest.

The next day there was great activity in the
woodshed — a scampering of lively feet, that be-
gan early in the morning and continued far toward
noon. The squirrels were moving. They gath-
ered up their newspaper nest and carried it —
diagonally — across the shed from the shaded
northwest to the sunny southeast corner, where
they rebuilt and slept snug throughout the winter.

Calico did not teach them this; neither would
their own squirrel mother have taught them.
They knew how, to begin with. They knew where
after one night of experience, which in this case
had to be a night of shivers.

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER AND PUPILS

CHAPTER I

BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

What does the author try to suggest by this title?

Let each one of you keep account of the birds, beasts, in-
sects and flowers that you can find in your door yard; or on
your way to school ; or on your farm ; or in your park. With
each thing, put down some description of it, the date you found
it, and what it was doing — and everything else you discovered
about it.

Page 4.

The ten folk in "bare skins" are: one eel, three newts or
salamanders, and six frogs. Those in shells were one snail
and four kinds of turtles.

"Wild Birds in City Parks" is by Herbert and Alice Walter;
published by A. W. Mumfort, Chicago. It is an excellent bird
guide, price 40 cents postpaid.

CHAPTER II

THE CRAZY FLICKER

Among the flicker's other thirty-five names are golden-
shafted woodpecker; clape; and yellow-hammer.

Page 15.

Flickers always have enormous families: they lay from five
to nine eggs, but the young so fill up the hole as they grow
149

150 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

that they stick out of the doorway often for sheer lack of
room.

Now and then a great amount of harm may be done by flick-
ers boring into roofs, ice houses, etc., but the good they do by
destroying worms and grubs far outweighs their harm.

On page 32 of "A Watcher in the Woods" you will read
how one used to hammer on the church during the Sunday
worship as if to wake up the congregation.

You must hear the loud ringing cry of "Yarup" over the
silent spring fields. Then later hide in the bushes and watch
the love making of a pair of flickers in the top of some neai'-by
tree. It is very funny.

CHAPTER III

THE WILD GEESE

The author has heard them passing in the dead of night
over the very heart of Boston, and from the roof of houses
near Boston Common has seen them many times in the day
winging over high above the noise and smoke of the city.

Page 26.

Tropic Z.one: the Canada geese do not go farther south
for the winter than the Gulf States. Many winter in the Caro-
linas.

Men with guns are the worst enemies; but there are many
others. Yesterday at the beach I picked up a herring gull ly-
ing dead on the sand. It had flown against a ship's mast at
night, confused by the lantern in the rigging, and broken its
neck. So it often happens to the geese.

Page 32.

Audubon: John James Audubon, the earliest and greatest
of American naturalists and bird lovers. A short life of him
is found in "Famous Men of Science" by Sarah K. Bolton.

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER AND PUPILS 151

Page 33.

"To a Waterfowl": Learn by heart the whole beautiful
poem. Bryant was born November 3d, 1794, in Cummington,
Mass., died June 12th, 1878, in New York City. Learn also
his other delightful bird poem "Robert of Lincoln." "To a
Waterfowl" was perhaps written at the sight of a wild duck
flying over ; it serves as well for the wild geese.

Page 33.

"Vainly the fowler's eye," that is the hunter's eye, "might
mark thy flight to do thee wrong." On March 4, 1913, Con-
gress passed a law protecting all wild geese, swans, ducks,
snipe, and other migratory birds, giving the Department of
Agriculture at Washington power to fix seasons over all the
country when these birds cannot be killed. It is one of the
greatest laws ever passed for bird protection.

CHAPTER IV

THE WOOD-PUSSY

"Wood-pussy" is a polite "society" name for the skunk.
The skunk is found pretty generally all over North America,
and is especially abundant near great cities and towns. It is
about the size of a big heavy cat, jet black with a V-shaped
white stripe dividing from the back of the head down over the
sides to its haunches. It has a large black and white tail. Its
fur is valuable; the boys about my home get two or three dol-
lars a skin for the best ones. They are tanned, dyed and re-
named Alaska Sable. But this is a useful animal, especially
to the farmer, and must be protected against the fur hunter.
1,310,185 skunk skins were sold in London in 1911 by one fur
house. Five years more of this fearful slaughter and the
skunk will be exterminated. Spare him !

Page 37.

Casco Bay is on the coast of Maine. Where?

152 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

CHAPTER V

A HOUSE OP MAXY DOORS

Page 47.

Fish Hawk: osprey, a splendid bird, one of the few birds
of prey that will build near the homes of men if unmolested.
In Rhode Island its nests are sometimes placed upon plat-
forms at the tops of tall poles erected for them in door yards.
Its cry and flight when it is fishing give a touch of wildness to
any scene.

Page 47.

"Crow" black-bird: the purple grackle; larger than the
red shouldered and "cow" black-birds, but so nearly like the
bronzed grackle that only trained observers can tell them
apart. From Carolina downward and westward to the Mis-
sissippi Valley you have the Florida Grackle, and from Vir-
ginia to Texas the boat-tailed grackle. The purple grackles
love city parks and tall trees about old country homes where
they nest in colonies as the rooks do in England. You should
read about them in Lowell's charming essay called "A Garden
Acquaintance."

Page 47.

The English Sparrow: so named because it was introduced
into this country from England. It is a street gamin, and a
pest. Outside of my study window as I write there is a fight
on between the sparrows and tree-swallows for possession of
a bird house on the barn ; and unless I take a hand in the fight
the beautiful, useful swallows will be driven away.

Page 47.

City of Babel: look up an account of this famous city in
the Bible, the 10th and llth chapters of Genesis.

Page 49.

Cord-wood: trees cut into four- foot lensrths to be cut later

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER AND PUPILS 153

in sticks for a stove. A cord of wood is four feet wide, four
feet high and eight feet long.

Page 50.

Chickadees: the little black-capped, gray birds that live all
winter with us and are known to every child who goes into the
woods. They never come into city parks to stay. They are
wood-birds.

Page 50.

Red-headed woodpeckers: relatives of the flicker, a little
smaller; strikingly colored black and white and red. When
on a tree the bird's red head, throat, neck and upper breast is
its field mark ; when on the wing the white of the wings is the
mark.

Page 52.

Three-Arch Bocks: a wild bird reservation just off the
coast of Oregon. See the author's account of it in the Atlantic
Monthly for March, 1912.

Page 52.

Murres (pronounced nrnrz) : they look like so many pen-
guins about the size of ducks crowding upon the rocks.

Page 52.

Cormorants, and puffins, and guillemots, and "stormy" petrels
and gulls-: all of these are sea birds; and are dwellers upon
the Rocks. All of these birds, or their very near relatives,
occur also on the Atlantic Coast, though here we have no
northern coast reservation for them corresponding to Three-
Arch Rocks. The petrel of these rocks is Reading's.

CHAPTER VI

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD

The especial object of this chapter and Chapter III is to
show you how many wild animal and bird traits, habits, etc.,
you can readily see by watching the domestic animals — the hen

154 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

stealing her nest, the cat crouching in the grass, the honking
of the geese, and the high roosting of the turkey.

Page 58.

Guineas: the wildest of domesticated birds. It was
brought originally from Africa,

Page 58.

Hornets' nest: the white or bald-faced hornet that builds
the big top-shaped paper nests in trees. You will often see
them flying around the screen doors in summer or about the
cows catching flies. They are among our best insect friends.

Page 58.

Flying-squirrels: now becoming very rare. They "fly" by
leaping from some high limb and stretching out their legs be-
tween which is a web or "wing" of skin. They make excellent
pets.

Pags 58.

Barn owls : so named because they love to nest in old barns
and towers. Read about them in Gilbert White's Natural His-
tory of Selborne. They kill great numbers of rats and mice,
but rarely or never kill a bird. Protect them if there is a pair
of them in your neighborhood.

Page 58.

Grindstone apple-tree : so named from the shape and hard-
ness of the apple. They are long "keepers."

Page 58.

Buzzards: the "turkey buzzard" so named because it looks
very much like a turkey. See the account of them in "Wild
Life Near Home."

Page 63.

Lynxes: the lynx is larger than the wild cat, but has some-
what similar habits. The one we know best is the Canada
lynx or loupcervier — loo'-saYvya'.

Page 64.

Spice bush: one of the earliest of spring flowers; a bush

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER AND PUPILS 155

six feet to twelve feet high with small yellow highly spiced
flowers along its branches. Also called Benjamin bush, all-
spice.

Page 66.

Roustabouts: name given to the deck hands and common
colored workmen.

Page 66.

Rosin-barrels: rosin is made of the pitch of pine trees, it
remains after the turpentine has been distilled and taken off.

CHAPTER VII

A SONG OF THE WINTER WOODS

This chapter explains itself. Don't fail to take a long
tramp this winter, alone, if you can't get some one to go with
you, into the woods and into the teeth of some wild, fierce
storm. When you get home tiy to think what makes the mem-
ory of the walk so full of pleasure. You may not have seen
any animal, nor heard anything but the wild wind, yet you are
glad you had the tramp, because of your feelings. What are
your feelings? Are they as real and worth while as facts and
observations'?

Page 79.

Cubby Hollow: a little pond near Bridgeton in New Jer-
sey near where the author lived as a boy.

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE 'POSSUM'S TRAIL

The 'possum or opossum, is a marsupial or "pouched" ani-
mal, that is, having a skin pouch like the kangaroo on the ab-
domen in which it carries its young. It is the only one of the

156 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

marsupial family in North America and is hence of great in-
terest to nature-lovers. See the author's account of the opos-
sum's habits in "Wild Life Near Home," and of its ancestors
in his volume called "Winter."

Page 83.

Uncle Jethro was an old darky slave who ran away from his
master before the war and found a home with the author's
grandfather.

Page 85.

Br'er possum means ''Brother possum."

Page 89.

"Being thrown into a brier-patch," is from the story of the
Tar Baby in the tales by Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Har-
ris.

Settee: the name for a long settle with a cushion upon it
used in old-fashioned country homes.

Page 90.

Calabash-gourd: a large gourd the size of one's head that
dries with a hard horny shell, much used for dippers and bird
houses in the country.

Page 92.

Lupton's Pond: another pond near the boyhood home of
the author.

Page 92.

Chestnut-oak: a large oak tree with bark and leaves much
like the sweet chestnut's.

Page 92.

Trail: means the tracks or scent left by an animal's feet
which the dogs follow.

Page 92.

Coon: a short spelling for raccoon, a wild animal of our
woods, belonging to the bear family. See the author's story
of one called Mux in "Roof and Meadow."

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER AND PUPILS 157
CHAPTER IX

THE DANCE IN THE ALDER SWAMP

Page 99.

Alder swale: a low wet clump of alder or patch of swampy
grass and bushes.

Page 99.

Bed maples: "red" because just coming into "red" or, bet-
ter, garnet bloom. Maples are among the first of our trees to
blossom and the first of all to scatter their ripened seeds on the
summer air.

Page 99.

Twisting flight: a kind of zig-zag, rapid and whirling. A
rifle's barrel is "rifled," that is, bored with spiral grooves which
give a rotary motion to the speeding bullet.

Page 100.

Woodcock: this interesting and valuable bird is doomed
to become extinct, it seems. We must do all we can to save it.

Page 100.

Tussock or hassock: a dense bunch of sedge or rushes.

Page 103.

Indian teepees: or tents of the Indians.

Page 103.
Barbecue: a whole roast ox.

CHAPTER X

CHICKAREE THE SCOLD

Chickaree: the common "red-squirrel," so called from its
cry. He is said to destroy the eggs and young of birds,
though I have never seen him do it, and I have a dozen nests
of Chickaree here about the house — one in the cellar, one in
the ice house, the others in the trees.

158 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

Page 117.

Pignuts: the common thick-shelled hickory nut.

Page 118.

Jays: the common blue jays.

Page 118.

Thorn mountain: one of the lesser White Mountains look-
ing down upon the town of Jackson, N. H.

Page 118.

Birch catkins: the fruit of the yellow birch.

Page 118.

Junco: the little slate-colored "snow bird" of winter. It
nests in the White Mountains and northward.

CHAPTER XI

A LESSON IN NATURAL, HISTORY

Page 125.

John W. P. Jenks was a well known professor at Brown
University, a friend of Agassiz, a great naturalist and museum-
maker. The author lived with him in his rooms in the Na-
tural History Museum at Brown University for the first three
years of the author's college course.

Page 125.

Institute: The South Jersey Institute at Bridgeton, New
Jersey, where the author prepared for college — and for life
too, thanks to the great teacher of the Institute, Dr. H. K.
Trask.

Page 126.

Linnceus: a great Swedish botanist — the father of Botany.
Read his life in "Famous Men of Science" by Sarah K. Bol-
ton.

Page 126.

Agassiz the great Swiss naturalist of Harvard College. See
"Famous Men of Science."

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER AND PUPILS 159

Page 126.

John James Audubon: See note to Chapter II.

Page 126.

Gilbert White: See note to Chapter VI on barn owls.
His quaint book should be known to you all.

Page 126.

Thoreau: the Concord naturalist, author of "Walden" and
other outdoor books which you will read sometime. He was
born 1817, died 1872. Pronounced Tho ro.

Page 126.

Tarn Edwards, an old Scotch naturalist whose life has been
written in a book called "The Life of a Scotch Naturalist" by
Samuel Smiles.

Page 126.

Centipedes: a poisonous "worm" though not a true worm.
It is one of the arthropoda (jointed legged creatures) be-
longing to the class myriapoda (many footed) and to the fam-
ily chilopoda (ki lop o da) so called from its having many
legs. Centiped means hundred footed, though of course it has
not so many as that. It grows to be nearly a foot long in
tropical countries; and its bite is very painful.

Page 126.

Okechobee: do you know what the land surrounding this
lake is called, and why1?

Page 126.

He had written a book: the book is called "A Popular
Zoology."

Page 128.

A lesson in mounting: that is in "stuffing" birds and
mounting them on their perches.

Page 129.

Yellow-billed cuckoo: the "rain-crow."

Page 129.

Cow-bird: you can tell them from other black-birds by

160 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS

their rusty brown color and their habit of following the cattle
about the pasture to feed on the insects — the only good thing
they do apparently.

Page 131.

Turtle dove's nest: or morning dove's nest. You will know
them by their likeness to the pigeon, and by the strange win-
nowing sound of their wings as they fly overhead.

Page 131.

WMppoorwill : every child of the country has heard this
bird of the dark. See the author's story of this bird in "Wild
Life Near Home."

Page 132.

Cat birds' nest: the cat bird is the slender long slate-col-
ored bird of our summer thickets; so named because of its
meouw, which sounds like the cat.

CHAPTER XII

CALICO AND THE KITTENS

Calico: so named because of her three colors. Three-col-
ored cats are also called "tortoise shell." It is very interest-
ing to note that most three-colored cats are females.

Note : We have read a great deal lately about wild mothers
teaching their young to fly and swim and hunt and fight, but
this story of Calico, which is true in all its essential points,
would show that young squirrels need such parental instruction
about as much as young human babies need their parents to
teach them how to cry.

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